Despite these unfavourable circumstances the cahiers contained no revolutionary ideas.The most advanced merely asked that taxes should be imposed only with the consent of the States General and paid by all alike.The same cahiers sometimes expressed a wish that the power of the king should be limited by a Constitution defining his rights and those of the nation.If these wishes had been granted a constitutional monarchy could very easily have been substituted for the absolute monarchy, and the Revolution would probably have been avoided.
Unhappily, the nobility and the clergy were too strong and Louis XVI.too weak for such a solution to be possible.
Moreover, it would have been rendered extremely difficult by the demands of the bourgeoisie, who claimed to substitute themselves for the nobles, and were the real authors of the Revolution.The movement started by the middle classes rapidly exceeded their hopes, needs, and aspirations.They had claimed equality for their own profit, but the people also demanded equality.The Revolution thus finally became the popular government which it was not and had no intention of becoming at the outset.
4.Evolution of Monarchical Feeling during the Revolution.
Despite the slow evolution of the affective elements, it is certain that during the Revolution the sentiments, not of the people only, but also of the revolutionary Assemblies with regard to the monarchy, underwent a very rapid change.Between the moment when the legislators of the first Assembly surrounded Louis XVI.with respect and the moment when his head was cut off a very few years had elapsed.
These changes, superficial rather than profound, were in reality a mere transposition of sentiments of the same order.The love which the men of this period professed for the king was transferred to the new Government which had inherited his power.
The mechanism of such a transfer may easily be demonstrated.
Under the ancien regime, the sovereign, holding his power by Divine right, was for this reason invested with a kind of supernatural power.His people looked up to him from every corner of the country.
This mystic belief in the absolute power of royalty was shattered only when repeated experience proved that the power attributed to the adored being was fictitious.He then lost his prestige.
Now, when prestige is lost the crowd will not forgive the fallen idol for deluding them, and seek anew the idol without which they cannot exist.
From the outset of the Revolution numerous facts, which were daily repeated, revealed to the most fervent believers the fact that royalty no longer possessed any power, and that there were other powers capable, not only of contending with royalty, but possessed of superior force.
What, for instance, was thought of the royal power by the multitudes who saw the king held in check by the Assembly, and incapable, in the heart of Paris, of defending his strongest fortress against the attacks of armed bands?
The royal weakness thus being obvious, the power of the Assembly was increasing.Now, in the eyes of the crowd weakness has no prestige; it turns always to force.
In the Assemblies feeling was very fluid, but did not evolve very rapidly, for which reason the monarchical faith survived the taking of the Bastille the flight of the king, and his understanding with foreign sovereigns.
The royalist faith was still so powerful that the Parisian riots and the events which led to the execution of Louis XVI.were not enough finally to destroy, in the provinces, the species of secular piety which enveloped the old monarchy.[8]
[8] As an instance of the depth of this hereditary love of the people for its kings, Michelet relates the following fact, which occurred in the reign of Louis XV.: ``When it was known in Paris that Louis XV., who had left for the army, was detained ill at Metz, it was night.People got up and ran tumultuously hither and thither without knowing where they were going; the churches were opened in the middle of the night...people assembled at every cross-road, jostling and questioning one another without knowing what they were after.In several churches the priest who was reciting the prayer for the king's health was stopped by his tears, and the people replied by sobs and cries....The courier who brought the news of his convalescence was embraced and almost stifled; people kissed his horse, and led him in triumph....Every street resounded with a cry of joy: `The king is healed.' ''
It persisted in a great part of France during the whole of the Revolution, and was the origin of the royalist conspiracies and insurrections in various departments which the Convention had such trouble to suppress.The royalist faith had disappeared in Paris, where the weakness of the king was too plainly visible;but in the provinces the royal power, representing God on earth, still retained its prestige.
The royalist sentiments of the people must have been deeply rooted to survive the guillotine.The royalist movements persisted, indeed, during the whole of the Revolution, and were accentuated under the Directory, when forty-nine departments sent royalist deputies to Paris, which provoked the Directory to the coup d'etat of Fructidor.
This monarchical-feeling, with difficulty repressed by the Revolution, contributed to the success of Bonaparte when he came to occupy the throne of the ancient kings, and in great measure to re-establish the ancien regime.
