HTAV Annual Conference 29 July 2011

1. HTAV Annual Conference29 July 2011 Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

2. ‘Change’ and the French Revolution ‘The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not on its growth and development. The error of Louis XIV was that he thought human nature would always be the same. The result of his error was the French Revolution. It was an admirable result.’ Oscar Wilde. This session will examine the notion of 'change' within the French revolution as well as some of the changes in the way it has been viewed and interpreted by historians. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

3. What I hope to provide you with: • Some slides to use with students • A prism through which to see the revolution • Some interactive resources • An opportunity for professional dialogue and exchange ‘Change’ • In teaching approach • In resources • In multi-media • In the pre-revolutionary, revolutionary and post-revolutionary period • Short term change and long term change • Change with Revolutions and VCAA Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

4. ‘Change’ in the teaching of Revolutions • Limited textbooks ‘pitched’ to secondary students in Australia (Victoria) . . . Now . . . • Audio and video material • Images • Digital resources • Opportunities for dialogue in and out of class (blogs, tumbler, podcasts etc). Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

5. ‘Change’ as a feature of the Revolution • The revolutionary calendar: • Was introduced by decree of the Convention on 5 October 1793. • An attempt to de-Christianise France (contemporary parallels worth highlighting to students). • Place names were purged of all Christian references. • Names given to children, tended now to be drawn from nature, heroes of antiquity or great ‘men’ of the Enlightenment. • Christian Feast Days were abolished. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

6. ‘Change’ as a feature of the Revolution • During this time there was vandalism to churches and ancient site in the name of the Republic – a description of such destruction: • “ . . . The second group arrived in Auxerre . . . Along the way they indulged themselves in all frenzied excesses possible against religious property: they broke down chapel doors, overthrew altars, threw down saints’ statues and images . . . [when] a copper crucifix [was] carried upside down, on a cart, offering for passers by to spit on it. When a citizen refused, one of the soldiers waved his saber under his nose and cut a bit off . . . “ Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

7. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant SOURCE: Mark Fielding – The Spirit of Change

8. A Massive Change? • There is no doubt that the French Revolution changed France enormously in the short term. But the extent to which it changed France in the long term, versus the extent to which the revolution simply interrupted long term developments which really produced modern France, is hotly contested. It is fairly easy to conclude that the revolution produced in France an identity and ideology which was not only new, but self consciously so, deliberately drawing nothing from the history which preceded the events of 1789 – 95. The monarchy was removed from power, the king and queen executed, and new forms of government tried in an attempt to find stability. • Source: The Consequences of the French Revolution on France and EuropeByRobert Wilde • http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/thefrenchrevolution/a/The-Consequences-Of-The-French-Revolution-On-France-And-Europe.htm Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

9. There was also, at various stages in the revolution, a deliberate attempt to build a new France, with a complete wiping away of seigniorial dues, aristocratic titles, a mass of taxation and tithes and a whole host of other hangovers from the supposedly ‘feudal’ government of old regime France. The idea of three ‘estates’ was abolished, as were noble and church privileges; nobility was completely ended, and church lands were nationalized and sold, causing a full tenth of all land in France to change hands, a massive redistribution. The clergy became salaried officials of the state. Most of these changes took place in only two years, a tiny timescale for such sweeping reform. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

10. Was all ‘change’ revolutionary? • Historians question the impact of these changes. For every example like the ‘departments’, the new system of administration which literally rewrote the map of France, you have a case like the seigniorial dues, which by 1789 had been well on the way to being replaced with rents, a situation ardent supporters of the revolution like to claim as being the result of events after 1789. For every standardisation of weights and measures across all of France you had the overstated claim that military and government careers were open to talent, not purchase, a situation which was already evolving under the ancien regime. • Source: The Consequences of the French Revolution on France and EuropeByRobert Wilde • http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/thefrenchrevolution/a/The-Consequences-Of-The-French-Revolution-On-France-And-Europe.htm Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

11. Change reflected in primary sources to use with students . . . . Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

12. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

13. Leonard Cowie, The French Revolution: Documents and Debates Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

14. Digital resources . . . Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

15. ‘Change’ in the teaching of Revolutions • ‘Change’ in resources: • You Tube • Google Scholar • I Tunes U – French Revolution for i-Books (Open University – England). • Podcasts • Vodcasts • Blogs • Apps – i pad, i pod Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

16. BBC Class Clips - http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/french.revolution/all/all/all/page-1?format=grid&pagesize=12 Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

17. The Social Contract – Melvyn Bragg • Synopsis: Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Social Contract and ask a foundational question of political philosophy – by what authority does a government govern?“ Man was born free and he is everywhere in chains”. So begins Jean Jacques Rousseau’s great work on the Social Contract. Rousseau was trying to understand why a man would give up his natural freedoms and bind himself to the rule of a prince or a government . . . With Melissa Lane, Senior University Lecturer in History at Cambridge University; Susan James, Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London; Karen O’Brien, Professor of English Literature at the University of Warwick. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

18. The Encyclopedie Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the French encyclopédie, the European Enlightenment in book form. One of its editors, D’Alembert, described its mission as giving an overview of knowledge, as if gazing down on a vast labyrinth of all the branches of human ideas . . . • observing where they separate or unite and even catching sight of the secret routes between them. It was a project that attracted some of the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment - Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot - striving to bring together all that was known of the world in one comprehensive encyclopaedia. No subject was too great or too small, so while Voltaire wrote of “fantasie” and “elegance”, Diderot rolled up his sleeves and got to grips with jam-making. The resulting Encyclopédie was a bestseller - running to 28 volumes over more than 20 years, amidst censorship, bans, betrayals and reprieves . . . And what was its legacy – did it really fuel the French Revolution? Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

19. Historiography • Select Resources. • History in Quotations Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

20. Change as a result of the ‘enlightenment’ . . . Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

21. The King’s Authority • The elements that made up the power of the King: • Concept of absolute monarchy During the reign of Louis XIV his bishop Jacques Bossuet stated: “In the exercise of lawful authority the king is, and ought to be, absolute; that is so far absolute that there is no legal authority which can delay or resist him”. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

22. The King’s Authority • The elements that made up the power of the King: • Theory of rule by divine right Bossuet also stated: “the King in his palace is the image of God in his heaven, who sets the whole of nature in motion” – as Adcock highlights, this meant that to criticise the King was to criticise God. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

23. The King’s Authority • The King exercised complete control of the executive functions of government. • He ruled through a cabinet of Ministers called the Council of State. • The King could appoint and dismiss all ministers. • The King’s personal authority was carried into the Provinces by royal governors (intendants), chosen and appointed by him. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

24. The King’s Authority • The King was not a despot. • According to Adcock the King “still had to respect the nation’s traditions and laws. In reality, he ruled beside provincial assemblies and other special groups enjoying their own traditional powers”. • William Doyle underlines that “while none of these groups actually challenged royal power between 1614 and 1789, they certainly placed some constraints on royal power”. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

25. A ‘challenge’ to Royal Authority. • The highest courts of appeal were called the ‘parlements’. • There were 13 supreme law courts to check and register royal laws. • The courts were given the power to make a remonstrance – a private memo informing the King that registration had been delayed because they had identified some technical problem in the law. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

26. A ‘challenge’ to Royal Authority. • Under Louis XV, many of the judges decided that they should try to moderate the power of the King and used the remonstrance as a means to politically oppose the monarchy. • In 1750s and 1760s the parlements had the power to stop Louis XV tax increases. • By 1770 the King was prepared to fight back and ordered that the courts be stripped of many of their powers, to dismiss half of the judges and to create new law courts. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

27. A ‘challenge’ to Royal Authority. • Relations between the King and the parlement largely settled from 1771-1774. • In 1774, Louis XVI, as new King, made the mistake of trying to win the parlements over by giving them back their old powers. • The judges were cautious in the use of their power initially. • The parlements would cause further problems at the time of the monarchy’s greatest crisis. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

28. ‘Change’ as a feature of pre-revolutionary France • . . . . But not enough • Financial controllers and policies . . . • Turgot • Calonne • Necker • Brienne Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

29. Many big changes took place in France during the Revolution. • The French Revolution was aimed to be more than just a revolution in government. It was meant to become a revolution in all areas of life. In the midst of the Enlightenment, those behind the Revolution thought that they could have the power to enact the changes they thought needed to be made in society at large. • Old ideas should be removed, and new ideas should be put into place through the force of law. They had the power and the drive to make whatever changes they wanted, and changes they would make. • Christianity was to be replaced with a new religion, founded on the Goddess of Reason rather than the archaic Judeo-Christian God. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

30. A new, better designed calendar would replace the Gregorian calendar that had been used since the Dark Ages. A new system of measurement would be designed to replace the antiquated and difficult to use systems of measurement that had developed over the centuries. • Of these things, the most lasting change came from the French Revolution's changes to the system of measurement. • It was during the French Revolution that the metric system was first developed and put into place, and it has grown over the last two centuries to become the most widely used system of measurement in the world. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

31. On the 8th of May, 1790, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, a Bishop who had sided with the Revolutionists, proposed before the National Assembly a change to the measurement system. It would be a completely new system, one that was both more scientifically accurate as well as easier to use. The National Assembly accepted this proposal, and set to work creating a new system of measurement. Talleyrand, the man who had set this change in motion, would later seek refuge in England during the Reign of Terror. • The National Assembly decided to create what is known as a decimal system. This means that each unit of measurement would be divisible by ten. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

32. This would not only include measurements of length, but also other measurements as well, such as volume, mass and temperature. Its name comes from the basic measurement of length, however, the meter, named after the Greek word metron meaning "a measure." • In order for this system to work, however, there had to be a base measurement, on which everything else could be based. The metre had to have a definition. It wasn't easy to find a definition that everyone could agree with. • The first proposal was for the meter to be defined by the length that a pendulum swings in one second. After some time though, it was thought that this would not be accurate enough. It was not a completely steady distance, and so a new definition was proposed. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

33. The Academy of Science recommended that the new definition for a meter be equal to 1 10 millionth (1/10,000,000) of the distance between the North Pole and the Equator, and this was accepted by the National Assembly in 1791. • This would provide a scientifically accurate and constant measurement for the meter and the basis of their new system. But after all of this work, the National Assembly failed to put their new system into place. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

34. In 1791 a Constitution was put into place, making France a Constitutional monarchy. • This meant that there was a governing Constitution which even the King must follow, as well as a legislative body, called the Legislative Assembly. • France began a war with Austria in 1792, which would lead to a series of wars across Europe. • In October of 1792, the monarchy was abolished and a Republic of France created. This would become Year 1 of the new French calendar, which was developed the next year. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

35. The Legislative Assembly was removed, and a new National Convention became the primary governing body of France. It would be the National Convention who would first make the metric system law, 5 years after its first proposal by Talleyrand. • While the people of France were not required to use the metric system, it became the official system of measurement of the Republic of France. The move to make the use of the metric system required by all would not come until many years later, when many other changes had come to France. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

36. Simon Schama is able to conclude his examination of the revolution by asking the question: how much would a standard village have been affected by it? There would no longer be a class of aristocrats at the top level, but this doesn’t mean the leading landholders would necessarily have been ejected, executed or humbled: in many regions, there was simply a social transformation from nobility to citizen, and the chance to acquire even more land in the church sales . . . They had more access to better courts, and might have been able to pay off debts if they played the economy well and benefited from a reduction in taxes. Schama argues that little of any profundity changed.(Schama, Citizens, 854 – 55), while – in contrast – Jones argues that “Those who managed to survive the dearths of the Revolution…experienced a real improvement in purchasing power; the first such improvement in several generations.” • Source: The Consequences of the French Revolution on France and EuropeByRobert Wilde • http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/thefrenchrevolution/a/The-Consequences-Of-The-French-Revolution-On-France-And-Europe.htm • Simon Schame, Citzens – A Chronicle of the French Revolution Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

37. Sources of Discontent • By 1780 in France the source of discontent was not only the King and the ‘old regime’. • The ‘old regime’ was a series of overlapping systems, many of them competing with each other. • Administratively, according to Adcock, “the old regime as a chaotic jumble of administration, justice, local taxes and religious institutions. No single subject in 18th century France could expect to have the same treatment as everybody else . . . It depended entirely upon where a person lived and which set of systems was in force there.” Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

38. War, debt, unhappy tax payers . . . • According to William Doyle, “Ever since the disasters of the Seven Years War Frenchmen had longed to see British arrogance humbled . . . . By the time Louis XVI ascended the throne that process seemed well under way.” • Throughout 1776 the King was persuaded to intervene in America to help humiliate the English. • As Doyle explains – “In April secret supplies began to be sent to the Americans, and the first steps were taken to mobilize French naval strength. Thus began a deterioration in French relations with the British which culminated in February 1778 in a treaty alliance between France and the United States, followed by five years of all-out warfare. When it ended, the British empire did indeed appear to have been shattered.” Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

39. BUT • The French involvement in the War of Independence brought the French to the brink of what William Doyle terms “financial exhaustion”. • The French financial advisers of the time (Turgot) had warned the King that involvement could be disastrous financially when he assumed office in 1774. • In the words of Turgot, otherwise, “the first gunshot will drive the State to bankruptcy”. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

40. Finances – Turgot - Necker • In 1776, Turgot’s fellow Ministers had lost faith in both his policies and his judgement. • In October 1776 Necker was appointed Director of the Treasury. • According to William Doyle – “Necker was not plucked from obscurity. He has carefully established himself as a man of influence and ability who offered alternatives to Turgot’s austere policies, and his appointment aroused high expectations”. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

41. Necker • Necker financed French involvement in the American war entirely by loans. • No new taxation was imposed while he was in power. • Interest incurred on the loans was charged to ordinary expenditure, and Necker claimed to have found the extra money for this from economies and ‘ameliorations’. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

42. Necker • Necker managed to raise 52 livres in loans between 1777 and his resignation in May 1781. • In February 1781, beset by a campaign of criticism and whisperings about his potentially poor financial management, he performed what Doyle has termed an “unprecedented gesture” – the Compte rendu . . . Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

43. Compte Rendu au roi • This was a balance sheet of the French monarchy’s finances. • It showed ordinary revenues to be exceeding expenditure by over 10 million livres, after 3 years of war and no increases in taxation. • The public, which bought thousands of copies, was convinced. • BUT it was in ‘extraordinary revenues’ where the real cost of war was recorded. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

44. Compte Rendu au roi • In 1781 the compterendu prepared Necker’s downfall. William Doyle explains that – “Bouyed up by the public adulation it brought him, he sought to force the King to admit him to the innermost council, from which he was excluded by his religion. The King . . . Refused, and Necker resigned.” (19 May 1781) • Necker’s resignation was a SIGNIFICANT blow to the State because he personally was s associated with the ‘improved’ economic situation. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

45. …and then there was Joly de Fleury • On 25 May 1781 Joly de Fleury was appointed Minister of Finance. • de Fleury felt obliged at last to increase taxation, with predictable objections from several of the parlements – but the taxes were still put in place. • Between May 1781 and the end 1782 almost 252 million livres were raised. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

46. More Taxes, a new Comptroller-General • The raising of funds under further taxes saw the King raise a THIRD addition tax for the period 1783-1786. • During 1783 (3 November) Calonne is appointed Controller-General (Minister of Finances). • Calonne’s appointment at Versailles was popular because (unlike Turgot and Necker) he made no efforts to impose economies at court. • Calonne believed that spending on ‘useful splendour’ was good for the country’s credit. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

47. Calonne’s approach . . . • From 1783-1787 Calonne kept borrowing money (over 653 million) but doubts started to emerge for how long this could continue . . . • By 1786 things were getting critical, and Calonne responded by proposing what Mark Fielding terms “a package of reforms to the King. A direct tax was to be imposed on all land owners without exception. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

48. Calonne’s plan . . . • Under these measures: • The corvee and internal customs barriers and dues were to be abolished. • Stamp duties on business transactions were to be increased. • Government spending reduced • The burden on the peasants was to be eased by reducing the taille by one-tenth. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

49. Opposition to Calonne’s Plan • The nobility strongly opposed these reforms. • Louis referred them to an old advisory body called the Assembly of Notables (a group of royal nominees, hand-picked). • The 144 members met at the assembly at Versailles in February 1787. • Calonne’s plans were rejected. • Calonne was dismissed and succeeded by Lomenie de Brienne(he actually supported many of Calonne’s reforms). Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant

50. Ongoing opposition to tax reform . . . • The notables continued to refuse the reforms under Brienne. • Louis XVI was forced to turn to the parlements to endorse the reforms. • The parlements refused to register royal edicts. • The parlements agreed with the Notables that only the Nation (as represented by the Estates General) had the right to determine such matters. • The Estates General had not met since 1614 – the public began to support the parlements regarding the recalling of the Estates General. Nick Frigo - Santa Maria/Education Consultant