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ABSTRACT
In 1787, the French monarchy invited rural residents to elect municipalités. These village administrations formed the lowest rung of a broader reform bringing the landed classes into provincial assemblies. The king and his ministers sought to enlist the support of royal subjects for fiscal reform. The monarchy’s archives regarding the rural municipalities bear directly on debates about the privileged orders in the origins of the Revolution. Nobles took part by the Enlightenment. They provoked the crisis of the regime in resisting royal policies in 1787 and 1788. The nobles nevertheless opposed the rural municipalities. They regarded the village elections as subversive of the jurisdictional rights of lords on which the monarchy was based. The rural municipalities thus represented a confrontation between the liberal ideals of many nobles and their underlying attachment to the political hierarchy of the old regime. As a result of this confrontation, a number of nobles became willing to attenuate the seigneurial regime and permit the peasants to participate in local government. These nobles subsequently played a role in opening the way to revolutionary change in 1789. Changes in the nobles' political attitudes thus resulted less from liberal ideas than from the social conflicts of the period.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Doina Pasca Harsanyi, Cynthia Bouton and the anonymous readers of the European Review of History – Revue européenne d’histoire for their constructive criticism of earlier versions of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Price, “Politics: Louis XVI,” 224–5, 237; Idem, Preserving the Monarchy, 114; Hardman, The Life of Louis XVI, 186–7, 189.
2. Price, “The maréchal de Castries,” 91.
3. Renouvin, Les Assemblées Provinciales, 78–80, 275–7; Lefebvre, The Coming of the French Revolution, 32; Cobban, Aspects of the French Revolution, 42, 113.
4. Egret, The French Prerevolution, 68.
5. The quote is in Tocqueville, The Old Régime, 201. See also pages 194 and 202–3.
6. Jones, Liberty and Locality, 90; Idem, Reform and Revolution, 41, 144, 246.
7. Tocqueville, The Old Régime, 140–2.
8. Several of these works, by no means a comprehensive list, include Bossenga, “Status, Corps, and Monarchy;” Félix, “Monarchy;” Swann, Provincial Power and Absolute Monarchy; Kettering, Patrons, Brokers, and Clients; Campbell, Power and Politics; Crubaugh, “Feudalism;” Beik, Absolutism and Society.
9. Vardi, The Physiocrats, 175, 177, 243; Kwass, Privilege and the Politics of Taxation, 233, 237, 243, 248, 251; Weulersse, La physiocratie, 320–1; Lachaze, Les états provinciaux, 87–88; Mille, G.-F. Le Trosne, 173, 178; Du Pont de Nemours, “Mémoire sur les municipalités,” 2: 577, 581–5; Schelle, Du Pont de Nemours, 190–1; Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, 189.
10. Mourlot, La fin de l’ancien régime, 29–30.
11. Hardman, The Life of Louis XVI, 154.
12. “Observations de Condorcet,” 4: 624.
13. Hardman, The Life of Louis XVI, 232–3.
14. Hardman, Ouverture to Revolution, 129, 132, 136–8, 141–2; Gruder, The Notables and the Nation, 3, 51–3, 157.
15. Blaufarb, The Great Demarcation, 4, 8–10; Hayhoe, Enlightened Feudalism, 7, 22, 47, 71, 194; Schwartz, “The Noble Profession of Seigneur,” 78, 83; Crubaugh, Balancing the Scales of Justice, 19, 47, 65, 76, 154–5.
16. Horn, Qui parle pour la nation?, 46–9.
17. Archives Nationales (hereafter AN) H1519. This archival file contains complaints sent by lords from all over the country.
18. AN H1609.
19. Horn, Qui parle pour la nation?, 46–47; Babeu, L’Assemblée d’élection, 8–11, 30–2. For the social background of the members of the provincial and district assemblies in Champagne see Hunt, Revolution and Urban Politics, 45–6.
20. AN H1599. See also AN H1519.
21. Fromont, Essai sur l’administration, 19–21.
22. De La Rochefoucauld, Wolikow, and Ikni, Le duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, 111.
23. AN H1519.
24. AN H1593.
25. AN H1465.
26. AN H1593.
27. Procès-Verbal des séances l’Assemblée Provinciale de L”Isle de France, lij-liv, lvj-lix, 1–5.
28. Tézenas du Montcel, Étude sur les Assemblées Provinciales, 153.
29. Archives Départementales du Rhône (hereafter ADR) 9 C 2.
30. ADR 9 C 13.
31. Procès-verbal des séances de l’Assemblée Provinciale des Trois Évêchés, 4–7, 333–4.
32. AN H1605.
33. Egret, Le Parlement de Dauphiné, 2: 51–7, 62–3.
34. AN H1596.
35. Although the evidence of seigneurial opposition to the rural elections cannot be expressed in numbers, it clearly amounted to an overarching countrywide process. Evidence of such opposition, from Poitou, Upper and Lower Normandy, Haute-Guyenne, Gascogne, Anjou and Maine has been left out of the foregoing discussion of the primary-source material so as to avoid the appearance of a repetitive list. I found this evidence in Archives Départementales de la Vienne C607, C608, AN H1597, H1598, H1602; Procès verbal des séances de l’Assemblée Provinciale de Haute-Guienne, 255; De la Foy, De la constitution du duché, 303–4; De la Trémoïlle, “L’Assemblée provinciale d’Anjou,” 554–6; Coeuret, L’Assemblée Provinciale, 74, 77; Mourlot, La fin de l’ancien régime, 98–9, 133.
36. Félix, Louis XVI et Marie-Antoinette, 126; Price, “The maréchal de Castries,” 94.
37. Egret, Le parlement de Dauphiné, 2: 200–1.
38. AN H1601. For Necker’s relationship to the high nobility see Hardman, Ouverture to Revolution, 249; Idem, The Life of Louis XVI, 266.
39. Price, The Road from Versailles, 61; Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution, 89, 91; Félix, Louis XVI et Marie-Antoinette, 450–1; Hardman, Ouverture to Revolution, 290–1; Lefebvre, The Coming of the French Revolution, 73–4, 90.
40. One can observe the activities of the members of a provincial assembly in Procès-verbaux des Assemblées Générales des trois ordres et des états provinciaux du Dauphiné, XXIII, 76, 97, 143–4, 249–51, 253–62, 265, 278, 327.
41. Kwass, Privilege and the Politics of Taxation, 233; Vardi, The Physiocrats, 243; Weulersse, La physiocratie, 320–1; Schelle, Du Pont de Nemours, 190–1; Du Pont de Nemours, “Mémoire sur les municipalités,” 2: 577, 582–3.
42. Necker, De l’administration des finances, 1:lxiv, 61, 2:253–4, 279–81.
43. William Doyle draws attention to contingent events in the origins of the Revolution. France and the Age of Revolution, 97–8.
44. AN H1519.
45. Lilti, The World of the Salons, 92; Denton, Decadence, Radicalism, 13–14; Coleman, The Virtues of Abandon, 136. Rousseau commented on the aid he received from the Prince de Condé. The Confessions, 452, 479.
46. AN H1590.
47. Ibid.
48. AN H1602.
49. AN H1609. For the information about seigneurial courts, game reserves, and peasants see Bataillon, Les justices seigneuriales, 100–1; Loutchisky, “Régime agraire,” 97, 134–5.
50. Andrews, Law, Magistracy, and Crime, 2; Taine, Les Origines de la France Contemporaine, 74n.
51. AN H1599.
52. AN H1609.
53. AN H1519.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid.
56. Ibid.
57. Ibid.
58. Maillard, Paysans de Touraine, 115, 118, 144, 163, 166, 168.
59. Bois, Paysans de l’Ouest, 329–31, 398; De Lavergne, Les Assemblées Provinciales, 178, 180; Bouloiseau and Buchoux, Les municipalités tourangelles, 51–52.
60. Procès-Verbal des séances de l’Assemblée Générale des trois provinces de la généralité de Tours, 61–62; Bouloiseau, “Organisation et activité des municipalités,” 194.
61. ADR 9 C 11.
62. ADR 1 C 42.
63. Egret, Le Parlement de Dauphiné, 2: 69–70.
64. The quote is from Egret, Le Parlement de Dauphiné, 2: 245. See also page 2: 244.
65. Dialogue sur l’établissement et la formation des Assemblées Provinciales, 3, 39, 101–4, 122–3.
66. Champion-Figeac, Chroniques dauphinoises, 320.
67. Procès-verbaux des Assemblées Générales des trois ordres et des états provinciaux du Dauphiné,162; Égret, La Révolution des notables, 39–40, 108.
68. Hoffmann, “L’administration provinciale dans la Haute-Alsace,” 407–9; Renouvin, Les Assemblées Provinciales, 275–6; Follain, Le village sous l’Ancien Régime, 76.
69. AN H1602.
70. Clavière, Les Assemblées des trois ordres, 221–2.
71. Markoff, The Abolition of Feudalism, 575, 596.
72. Tackett, Becoming a Revolutionary, 81–82; Hindie Lemay, Dictionnaire des constituants, 281–2; Dériard and Dériard, Antoine-Auguste Dériard, 301.
73. Berton des Balbes and Félix, “Noblesse: Protestation,” 28; Hindie Lemay, Dictionnaire des Constituants, 615.
74. Jones, Reform and Revolution, 183, 185.
75. Fitzsimmons, The Night the Old Regime Ended, 171–2; Blaufarb, The Great Demarcation, 10.
76. Fitzsimmons, The Night the Old Regime Ended, 108–9; Tackett, Becoming a Revolutionary, 172–4; Hindie Lemay, Dictionnaire des Constituants, 874; Markoff, The Abolition of Feudalism, 428; Égret, La révolution des notables, 79, 107–8; Du Bus, Stanislas de Clermont-Tonnerre, 129.
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Stephen Miller
Stephen Miller is Associate Professor of History at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is the author of State and Society in Eighteenth-Century France: A Study of Political Power and Social Revolution in Languedoc (2008) and, co-authored with Christopher Isett, The Social History of Agriculture: From the Origins to the Current Crisis (2017).