the era of the french revolution: some comments on opportunities for research and writing

The Era of the French Revolution: Some Comments on Opportunities for Research andWritingAuthor(s): Richard CobbSource: The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Jun., 1958), pp. 118-130Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1872757 .

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NOTES

THE ERA OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: SOME COMMENTS ON OPPORTUNITIES FOR RESEARCH AND WRITING

RICHARD COBB

A LL specialists of the French Revolution and the Empire will be grateful to Pro-

fessors Stewart, Manuel, Idzerda, and Holt- man for their extremely comprehensive report and for their suggestions regarding the future course of research on this closely packed and inexhaustible period.' Not only have they given the main problems both of tech- nique and of choice of subject a general airing but their suggestions will be likely to stimulate a valuable discussion on profitable methods of approach to a period the history of which is still in the course of being re- explored and rewritten. Furthermore, as in recent years the French Revolution has perhaps fallen somewhat out of favor both with research historians and with students, their report is likely to revive interest in a subject that we can ill afford to neglect. Also, while they were thinking primarily of the Ameri- can graduate student, working mainly in America, they evoke problems that are necessarily of interest to English and French specialists as well, for tlhey lhave not confine(d themselves to discussing future research in the resources of American libraries alone. Their papers raise general matters that fall under the headings of source material, choice of subject, use of technical aids, and what can only be described by the French expres- sion etat actuel de la question. In view of the interest aroused in England and in France by the papers, I hope that it will not be thought out of place for an English specialist to add a few comments of his own.

I Professor Manuel, in his report on the pre-

Revolutionary period, makes a number of

1 Journal of Modern History, XXIX (June 1957), 85-98.

suggestions that require further comment or qualification. His reference to notarial records needs clarification: they have long been available to the research student, both in Paris, where they can be consulted at the Minutier Central du Notariat at the Archives Nationales, once permission has been obtained from the individual notaire who has succeeded to the charge,2 and in the provinces where, in some instances, they have been deposited in the archives departementales or are easily accessible in the chambres des notaires. Most recent French biographers, as well as literary historians, have made full use of this admirable source on social and family history:3 Robert Dauvergne, in his meticulous analysis of the town and country houses of a great eighteenth-century noble- man,4 Jean Sentou, in his articles on the Toulouse bourgeoisie,5 General Herlaut, in his recent biography of Ronsin, are all cases in point, and the first two have made statistical use of material of this kind.6

2 This permission is in fact never withheld and may be considered merely an administrative formality owing to the fact that notarial records are technically "on loan" to the Archives Na- tionales.

3 0. Voilliard, "Difficultes et surprises de la documentation pour l'histoire sociale au XIXe siele: l'exemple de Nancy," Actes du 81me Con- gres national des societes savantes (Paris, 1956), pp. 87-102.

4 Robert Dauvergne, Les re'sidences du marechal de Croj; (Paris, 195)2).

5 Jean Sentou, "Faillites et commerce 'a Tou- louse en 1789," Annales historiques de la Re'volution frang2aise, No. 132 (1953), pp. 217-56; idem, "Impots et citoyens actifs i Toulouse au debut de la Revolution," Annales du Midi, 1948, Nos. 3-4, pp. 159-79; Jean-Louis Magnan, Le notariat et la Revolution frangfaise (Montauban, 1952).

6 Statistical evidence derived from notarial

118



THE ERA OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 119

Professor Manuel refers to the "new posi- tivism" of the "Labrousse school." I do not think that there is a "Labrousse school," but rather that any French specialist of the Revo- lution would accept the general premises laid down by MIM. Lefebvre and Labrousse, among which is that of "social stratification" (etudes des structures sociales) based on an "'economic hierarchy." I do not know whether this premise is necessarily a Marxist one, but what other would Professor Manuel propose as a basis for social history? It should in all fairness be added that M. Labrousse has never confined social stratification exclusively to wealth and, like M. Lefebvre, in his approach to social history he has always taken fully into account such human elements as the importance of the family as an independent unit, temperament, enthusiasm, fear, health, superstition, credulity, and sex as components of individual or collective behavior.

Professor Manuel expresses the hope that a historian should not forget the world of the "laboring classes," the "secret world of the compagnonnages." Indeed, they have not been forgotton: there is M. Chauvet's recent work on the ouvriers du livre,7 M. Tr& nard's articles on the various categories of the Lyon ouvrieys en soie.8 There have also

records should, however, be treated with extreme caution, especially when derived from inventories of stock or from marriage contracts and com- mercial transactions, owing to the prevailing habit of all parties of disguising the full extent of their resources in order to avoid exposing themselves to the attentions of the royal revenue officers. It can generally be assumed that notarial computations will be well below the true figures and in business transactions the contractants had every inducement to employ fictitious figures.

7 Paul Chauvet, Les ouvriers du livre en France de 1789 ai la Constitution de la Federation du Livre (Paris, 1956). See also Henri Gachet, "Con- ditions de vie des ouvriers papetiers au XVIIIe siecle," Actualite de l'histoire, 1955, pp. 2-21.

8 Louis Tr6nard, "La crise sociale lyonnaise a la veille de la Revolution," Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, 1955, pp. 5-54. For a slightly later period, see F. Evrard, "Les ouvriers du textile dans la region rouennaise 1789-1802," Annales hist. de la Rev. fr., No. 108 (1947). An- other "submerged group" that has only recently come into the territory of the research historian is the non-commissioned and soldier rank of the army of the ancien rdgime. The infinite possibili-

appeared in recent years, on both sides of the Channel, a whole series of articles on what may broadly be described as the "popular movement" before, during, and after the Revolution.9 This movement, it is true, was not recruited from among the "laboring classes," save in so far as master craftsmen brought along their journeymen and their

ties of profitable social research on this important and highly mobile cross-section of French society in the eighteenth century have been emphasized in the original and altogether remarkable paper read by M. Pierre Courvisier to the Soci6te d'histoire moderne: "Une source de l'histoire sociale de l'ancien regime: Les archives des corps de troupe," Bulletin de la Socie'te', 1955, pp. 4-9. M. Courvisier, who is at present an assistant at the Sorbonne, is preparing a main thesis on the social composition of the ancien regime army. He has rendered a very considerable service to research historians in calling attention to the immense wealth of material contained in the regimental musters that are kept in the casemates of the Fort de Vincennes (Archives administra- tives de la Guerre) and that have been preserved for a large number of line regiments of the royal army. The details given in these muster roles-place and date of birth, profession of par- ents, previous professions of the soldier, religious certificates, noms de guerre, transfers, promotion, height, distinguishing marks, family-represent possibly the most complete source of information concerning the petit peuple of French town and coulntryside in the latter part of the eighteenth century, information of this kind being particularly detailed from 1770 onward. As the army tended to be recruited from among the poorer sections of the community and in the poorer provinces of the kingdom, a systematic use of the regimental musters will offer not only a series of personal biographies of individual soldiers, but will also allow a certain number of generalizations concerning social conditions in the different provinces of France.

9 George Rude, "La taxation populaire de mai 1775 a Paris et dans la region parisienne," An- nales hist. de la Re'v. fr., April-June, 1956; "The Outbreak of the French Revolution," Past and Present, No. 8 (November 1955); "The Motives of Popular Insurrection in Paris during the French Revolution," Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, XXVI (1953); "Prices, Wages and Popular Movements in Paris during the French Revolution," Economic History Review, VI, No. 3 (April 1954); idem and R. C. Cobb, "Le dernier mouvement populaire de la Revo- lution a Paris: les journees de germinal et de prairial an III," Revue historique, October-



120 RICHARD COBB

apprentices when it was a question of coming out on the street, but rather from the independent artisan and small shopkeeper classes.

Again, many of Professor McCloy's sug- gested topicslO have already been the object of both articles and monographs for the pre- Revolutionary period and for that of the Revolution itself. It would not be the place here to list the innumerable works inspired by every possible aspect of the food problem in the eighteenth century"1-and by prob- lemes de subsistances I mean as much the difficulties in the way of transport and distribution, the panic fears and suspicions of popular mentality, the constant belief in the

December, 1955. Dr. Rud6 is at present preparing a monograph in English devoted to the popular journees in Paris during the Revolution. He is also the author of numerous articles on riots and popular disturbances in eighteenth- century London.

10 Journal of Modern History, XXIX, 86, n. 5. 11 The best general works on eighteenth-cen-

tury food problems, as opposed to the particular problems arising out of circumstances peculiar to the Revolutionary period, are the articles of Uon Cahen, who died before completing the general work he had been preparing on the eighteenth-century grain trade: "L'approvisionnement de Paris en grains au debut du XVIIIV si&le," Bulletin de la Socie'te d'histoire moderne, March 1922, and "La question du pain a Paris a la fin du XVIIIe siecle," Cahiers de la Revolu- tion franwaise, No. 1 (1934). As an introduction to the whole problem of the food supply of Paris in the eighteenth as in the seventeenth century, reference should be made to Jean Meuvret's admirable article, "Le commerce des grains et des farines A Paris et les marchands parisiens a le'poque de Louis XIV" Revue d'histoire mnod- erne et contemporaine, 1956, pp. 169-203. On transport and distribution problems before and during the Revolution, see Andre Remond, Atudes sur la circulation marchande en France aux XVIIIe et XJXe siecles. I: Les prix des trans- ports marchands de la Revolution au Premier Empire (Paris, 1956), and my general articles: "Le "Problmes de subsistances de l'an II et de l'an Terreur: la question des arrivages," Bulletin de la Societe' d'histoire moderne, June 1954, and "Problmes de subsistances de l'an II et de l'an III: L'exemple d'un petit port normand: Hon- fleur," Actes du 81me Con gras des societes savantes, pp. 295-335. The best regional survey of food problems during the Revolution is R. Werner, L'approvisionnement en pain de la

export of grain supplies abroad, the shortage of labor and of horses and carts as a result of wartime requisitioning, the state of the roads and waterways, the seasonal difficulties in circulation, as the basic problems of production in the form of bad harvests and primitive methods of cultivation. The late Octave Festy has amply covered all the technical aspects of purely agricultural history, including foot-and-mnouth disease, methods of stock-breeding, the introduction of new crops, and improvements in agricultural imple- ments in the course of the Revolution proper,12 but much of what he wrote might be applied to the preceding period also.13 French agricultural techniques did not move fast, despite the great property changes of the Revolutionary period and the incentives of war, shortages, and freedom from feudal servitudes. Local historians have studied the particular problems facing the Channel fisheries during the Terror, while there are works on supplies to Paris of salted herrings through the Dieppe marees, of meat and of floated wood from the Nievre and the

population du Bas-Rhin et de l'armee du Rhin pendant la Revolution (Strasbourg, 1956).

12 Octave Festy, Les conditions de production et de recolte des cereales 1789-1795 (Paris, 1947), and L'agriculture pendant la Revolution fran- raise: l'utilisation des jachres (Paris, 1950). See also, by the same author, Les animaux ruraux en l'an II (Commission de recherche et de publication des documents relatifs a la vie economique de la Revolution), Vol. I (1941), Vol. II (1946), Conclusions (1948); H. Hours, "L'tcole v-6t6ri- naire de Lyon et les epizobties au XVIILe si6cle," Albums du crocodile (Lyon), 1957; A. Dubuc, "La culture de la pomme de terre en Normandie au XVIIIe siecle," Annales de Normandie, 1953.

13 Reference should also be made to the various cours publics that M. Jean Mfeuvret has devoted, in recent years, to seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century agricultural methods and imple- ments, at the -cole pratique des Hautes ]-tudes, Paris. Much of M. Meuvret's immense knowledge of the social and agricultural history of France during the reign of Louis XIV will shortly be available, in condensed form, to the English-speaking public, in the chapter which M. Meuvret is preparing on the internal government of France during the last twenty years of the reign of Louis XIV for the Canmbridge Mod- ern History, Vol. VI: The Decline of Louis XIV and the Great Northern War, edited by John Bromley.




Yonne.14 The requisitioning of horses and carts figures as largely as that of grain and hay-and it was possibly hated even more by the peasant victims of these measures-in any provincial study of economic life during the Terror.

Again, the attitudes of a very hypothetical "average Revolutionary" toward marriage, the family, bachelorhood, children, sexual excesses and deviations, education and the arts, foreigners, and dialects have been the subject of books and articles on individual Revolutionary behavior.15 If we have little or no information concerning the attitudes of similar groups in the period before the Revolution, it is because these people exist, from the historical point of view, only thanks to a type of documentation that is itself peculiar to the Revolution and that reveals, for a brief period of eighteen months or two years, the submerged history of the Parisian and small town artisan and shopkeeper, traces of whose individual existence disap- pear with the collapse of the popular movement in the year III and with the end of the historical role of "revolutionary man." But this "average Revolutionary" was not made in a day, and in most of his characteristic attitudes he reflects prejudices and beliefs that were probably widely shared among the master craftsmen and shopkeepers of late eighteenth-century French towns.

Professor Manuel rightly emphasizes the gaps in the field of institutional history, which is, however, well represented in France by MM. Mousnier, Godechot, Livet, and Fr6ville.16 In England, Professor Cobban

14 On the supply of meat to Paris in the eighteenth century, see Jean Vidalenc, "L'approvisionnement de Paris en viande sous l'ancien regime," Revue d'histoire economique et sociale, 1952. On wood supplies to the capital, see my article "Le mouvement revendicatif parmi les bateliers de l'Oise et de la Marne au cours de l'hiver de 1793- 1794." Revue d'hist. ec. et soc., 1954, No. 4, pp. 353-66. On the Channel fisheries, some references in my article "Politique et subsistances en l'an III: 1'exemple du Havre," Annales de Normandie, 1955, No. 2, pp. 135-59.

15 J. Lhote, "Le divorce 'a Metz sous la Revolu- tion et l'Empire," Annales de l'Est, 1952, No. 2; Jean Rivoire, "La Revolution franSaise contre les c6libataires," Miroir de 1'histoire, 1956; R. C. Cobb, "The Revolutionary Mentality in France," History, XLII (1957), 181-96; Roger Jaquel, Un terroriste alsacien: le cordonnier Jung (1760-

has created his own school of institutional historians among the students of his London seminar,17 while Mr. John Bromley has con- tributed an extremely penetrating analysis of French autocracy and its relations with the parlements during the reign of Louis XV.18

It is no doubt true that the French have got beyond the "history of ideas" stage and, mercifully, have not yet reached that perfect alibi for the tired research historian, the "history of history." When one compares the output of French research with what is at present happening in England (where students are even put to studying the scattered notes of the late Lord Acton) or in Italy (where some of the best abilities are wasted on the arid task of establishing the intellectual affiliations of Buonarroti and his friends and where one of the main publish- ing houses is in the process of bringing out critical editions of Quinet and Louis Blancl9), one can only be thankful for some reluctance on the part of the French to return to the weary pastures of Mornet, Fav, and Hazard. However, there has been recent work of dis- tinction on both intellectual life and artistic creation during the late eighteenth century and the Revolutionarv period. M. Louis Tr6nard is the author of a number of studies on intellectual life in Lyon during the last years of the ancien re'girne, on the book and printing trade in France's second city, and

1793). Contribution d l'histoire de la petite bou)- geoisie strasbourgeoise soiLs la Revolution fran- Vaise (Strasbourg, 1954).

16 H. Freville, L'intendance de B7retagne 1689- 1790 (3 vols.; Rennes, 1953).

17 The theses of two of Professor Cobban's research students will be published in the course of this year: G. J. de C. Mead, "The Administra- tive Noblesse of France during the Eighteenth Century, with SpeA;al Reference to the Intendants of the g6n6ralit6s" (Ph.D. 1955), and J. F. Bosher, "The Movement for Internal Free Trade in France during the Eighteenth Century" (Ph.D. 1957). Another of his graduates is at present preparing a thesis on eighteenth-century municipal institutions in France.

18 John Bromley, "The Decline of Absolutism in France," in France, Government and Society, ed. J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (London, 1957).

19 Edgar Quinet, La Rdvolution, with introduction and notes by Alessandro Galante Garrone (Turin, 1953).



122 RICHARD COBB

on Lyon painters and sculptors.20 His main doctoral thesis,21 which will appear shortly in book form, takes in the whole sweep of intellectual and artistic life among the Lyon bourgeoisie from the 1770's to the fall of the Empire. In the field of the history of science, mention should be made of the original and stimulating articles of M. Arthur Birembaut on individual eighteenth-century engineers antd scientists.22

Professor Manuel proposes "religious consciousness" as a rewarding and original subject for future research. It is, however, difficult to suggest what type of archival material might be discovered that would offer statistical information on the "religious consciousness" of the peasant population. For such matters we can turn only to the collective protests voiced in the numerous rural risings provoked, in the winter of 1793-94, by measures toward de-Christianization and iconoclasm which maniy country people at-

20 Louis Trenard, Commerce et culture: le livre i Lyon au XVIIIe siecle (Lyon, 1953); L'oeuvre de Jean-Jacques de Boissieu (Lyon, 1955); "Le theatre lyonnais sous le Consulat et lREmpire," Cahiers d'histoire, I (1958); 'Les idees m6dicales de Barthez ;h Recamier," Revue lyonnaise de l'htistoire de la medecine, 1958; "Un notable lyonnais pendant la crise revolutionnaire: Pierre Toussaint Dechazelle," Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, 1958. See also P. Bar- riere, "Les academies et la vie intellectuelle dans la societe meridionale au XVIIIe si&le," Annales du Midi, October, 1950.

21 Louis Trenard, Histoire sociale des idees: Lyon, de l'Encyclopedie au preromantisme (2 vols.; Paris, 19,58).

22 Arthur Birembaut, "A propos des biographies de Lavoisier," Actes du VIlme Congr4es international d'histoire des sciences (Jerusalem, 1953); "Quelquies aspects de la personnalite de Lavoisier," Congres de lAssociation pour l'avance- ment des sciences (Luxembourg, 1953); "Prkcisions sur la biographie du mathematicien Van- dermonde et de sa famille," ibid.; "Les pr6occu- pations des mineralogistes francais au XVIIIe sikcle," ibid.; "Les frAres Engramelle," Actes du FIlime Congorhs international d'histoire des sci-

ences (Florence, 1956). M. Birembaut is also the author of the chapter on mineralogy in the new ESncyclopedie de la Pleiade: Histoire universelle des sciences (Paris, 1957). On medical history, as well as the above-mentioned article of Louis Trenard, see Dr. L. Dulieu, "La vie medicale et chirurgicale t Montpellier du 12 aoout 1792 au 14 frimaire an III," Revue d'histoire des sciences, 1955, No. 1.

tributed to the presence of "Protestants" in the seats of power, in the Conveintion, in the governing committees, and in the entourage of the repre'sentants en mission. We may gather from much scattered evidence, drawn mostly from the reports of local comites de surveillance and from the rapports d'cadaires of the district administrations, a certain number of largely unrelated data concerning popular attitudes in religious matters during the Revolution, such as the very general attachment of the country people to Catholi- cism and to Catholic traditions and feast days, particularly the Fete-Dieu, the Fete de la Vierge, the Rois, as well as the great Easter and Christmas festivals, the persistence of superstition and witchcraft in isolated areas of the Alassif Central, the Forez, and the Alps, as well as the prevalent anticlericalism of large sections of the urban population and of the army. Although it is the documentation of the Revolutionary period that offers us the only information on these subjects, it is evident that most of these attitudes go back many years before this period. Rural immobility in religious questions is above all a matter of tradition and habit, while the petit peuple of the towns and the cadres of the regular army did not become anticlerical overnight with the advent of an actively anti- Christian policy in the autumn of 1793. But all such evidence is fragmentary and local, and it would be extremely difficult to draw up an accurate social assessment of "religious consciousness" among all sections of the community during the last years of the ancien regime.

The Revolutionary period offers somewhat better prospects and one might hope to learn a great deal more than the very incomplete picture we may form at present of the progress of the de-Christianization movement in the French provinces. It would, however, be very difficult to obtain an over-all picture of a situation that varied almost from village to village, according to the vagaries of personal animosities, the intelligence and finesse of the local officeholder, and the state of personal and party factions within the parish councils and municipalities. There was probably no aspect of everyday life in the years before and during the Revolution that was so much subject to purely personal con- siderations and that lends itself less to syn- theses.



TI HE ERA OF T'HE FRENCH REVOLUTION 123

Rather than attempting to assess the "religious consciousness" of the French popula- tioin, it would be wiser to set one's self a more modest aim. Professor Le Bras and his students have shown what may be obtained from careful use of diocesan and parish records concerning what the French term la J)ratique religieuse.23 A more prosaic thing than "religious consciousness," this concerns what the Norimians call un eglisier, someone who attends church from habit and the desire to conform to accepted social practice. A numiiber of local enquetes have been published on this subject in the leading French provincial reviews.24

II In the report devoted to the Revolution-

ary period proper, l'rofessor Idzerda suggests that future researclh should be directed primarily toward cultural and intellectual history. Tlhis surely is very questionable advice wheni onie conisiders the vast amount of work still to be donie on biographical, social, eco- noimiic, and fiscal history, tlianks to the' still largely unexploited wealth of archives de- 1)( itenmentales, archives con "n unales, archives jud(liciaires (tributnaux de commerce), archives notariales, archives des chainbres de com- mnerce, to ml-ention only the public and semi- public source imaterial. While no one would deny the importance and initerest of cultural andl intellectual history, in a revolutionary period it represents soml-ething of a side issue, save in so far as it concerns propaganda or helps to explain popular prejudices. It is of less importance, in any case, than the progress of the popular movemient, the manifesta- tiotns of popular discontent, the day-to-day problems of food supply and rationing, low wvages an(d rising prices, hunger, disease, in- creased mortality-all of which make up the stuff of the still largely submerged history of the "people's revolution." All research

23 G. Le Bras, Introduction a l'histoire de la Ipratique religieuse en France (Paris, 1942) and ,tulsdes de sociologie religienlse, Vol. II (Paris, 1956).

24 M. Join-Lambert, "La pratique religieuse dans le Dioci-se (le Rotien de 1707 a 1789." Aiinales de Norrnandie, III (1953), 247-74, V (1955), 37-49. See also Albert Soboul, "Sentiment religieux et cultes poptilaires pendant la Revolution," Ar- chives de sociologie des religions, 1956, No. 2, pp. 73-87.

involves an element of choice and necessi- tates certain priorities. There is as yet no proper study of the sans-culotte movement in Paris and in the provinces.25 The economic crisis of 1795-96, with its attendant popular disorders and famine conditions, still awaits its historian;26 the social composi-

25 As far as the sans-culotte movement in Paris is concerned, this extremely important gap in our knowledge of the popular movement during the Terror will shortly be filled by the publication in 1958 of Albert Soboul's main thesis on the sans-culotte movement in the Paris sections from May 31 to 9 Thermidor (to be published by Payot, Paris). Meanwhile, there is a useful and original collection of source material on the sans-culotte movement in Paris in the joint publication of Walter Markov and Albert Soboul, Die Sansculotten von Paris: Dokumente zur Geschichte der Volksbewegung 1793-1794 (Berlin, 1957). The documents are in the original, with German translations on the opposite pages.

26 Far the best general work on the 1795 crisis is a regional study, by the late Renee Fuoc, La reaction thermidorienne a Lyon (1795) (Lyon, 1957). Mlle Fuoc has, however, concentrated primarily on the political scene and on the progress of reaction and royalism in a community that had previously been wracked by federalism, civil war, and repression. The case of Lyon is in many ways exceptional, and it would be unwise to attempt to draw conclusions applicable to the rest of France from Mlle Fuoc's excellent monograph. A similar study is being tundertaken, under the aegis of Pierre Guiral, professor of modern history at Aix, on the year III crisis in Marseille. The only general work on the period, apart from the excellent general summaries of Albert Mathiez and Georges Lefebvre, is the late Professor Tarle's Germinal i Prairial (Moscow 1951). Professor Tarle6 made full use of the F II series in the Archives Nationales and in the papers of Baron Fain in the MSS of the Bibliothe- que Nationale, both primarily Parisian sources: he used no provincial sources, however, and his documentation does not therefore allow for a general assessment of the crisis applicable to the whole of France. In a series of articles published in Parisian and provincial reviews, I have at- tempted to analyze the effects of the economic and near-famine crisis in Paris, in the Seine Valley, in Amiens, in the North, in occupied Belgiuim, and to compare the situation there with that of the Mediterranean zone. A general resume of my conclusions concerning the effects of the crisis in the Paris supply zone may be found in my article on Honfleur (see n. I1 above). I have not yet accumulated sufficient material to allow for a general picture of the situation



124 RICHARD COBB

tion of the basic Revolutionary institutions has up to now been studied only on a local and individual basis, with the result that the real cadres of the Revolutionary movement are still largely unknown to us and that the whole network of the specifically Revolu- tionary institutions,27 as opposed to the autorites constituees, has only recently come into the ken of the research historian. Most would agree that these subjects should come higher in the list of priorities than the activities of the "creative minority" and of the various counter-revolutionary groups. The study of Revolutionary history should be devoted in the first place to the revolutionaries themselves and to the institutions through which they operated rather than to small groups of malcontents who discovered that a country in the throes of a great social revolution and with several civil wars and a foreign war on its hands was not an ideal place for artistic creation and intellectual activity. The history of the Counter-Revolution is another matter; here, at least, the researcher may meet with ample reward, thanks to the di- versity of archival material to be found particularly in England, where it is at present being exploited by Professor Goodwin and his students.28

Professor Idzerda very properly insists on our lack of knowledge both of the composition and, above all, of the workings of the two great governing committees. Our curi-

covering the whole of France. It would also be necessary to extend research to the year IV in order to obtain a complete picture. Finally, Kare Tonnesson, of the University of Oslo, is submitting a thesis in French on the Germinal and Prairial days in Paris, in which he analyzes the economic crisis in so far as it affected the population of the capital.

27 By "revolutionary institutions" I mean comites de surveillance, societes populaires, armees revolutionnaires, commissions rivolutionnaires, commissions militaires, commissions de justice populaire, as opposed to the municipalities, the districts, the ordinary network of autorites constituees.

28 A. Goodwin, "Counter-Revolution in Brit- tany: The Royalist Conspiracy of the Marquis de la Rouerie, 1791-3," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, XXXIX (March 1957), 326-55. Mr. Maurice, Hutt, lecturer in the University of Leeds, is at present engaged in work on the Puisaye Papers, in the Public Record Office, London.

osity with respect to the latter problem is never likely to be satisfied as the two comite's, like most government organs, were not in the habit of keeping minutes. But we are especially ignorant both of the actual fonc- tionnement of the second of the great comites, that of siirete gene'rale, whose origin has for long been the object of systematic research by Professor Goodwin, and of the enormous army of subordinate agents that the chief police power in Revolutionary France employed in every department of the Republic. It transpires, from piecemeal research in local records, that this committee certainly had at its beck and call a far greater army of commissaires and delegates than the Comite' de salut public, and that it consequently was better equipped to make its influence felt even in the most remote parts of the Re- public. As the directing power of the vast machinery of arrest, Vadier and his colleagues dispatched all over France their missendi, bearers of mandats d'arret and mandats d'amener, and we may find members of the Revolutionary committees of the Paris sections going as far away as Bayonne and Nice to execute their duties. The extent of the action of these agents should be borne in mind in particular when such initiatives as that of the de-Christianization campaign are considered. In many ways, the Comite de surete generale was better placed than its younger and more august partner to carry out, all over France, policies that were of its own making, as was the case especially with the anti-Christian campaign in the provinces. But the multitude of these subordinate agents and the very extent of their influence make a comprehensive study of the workings of the police committee the task of a lifetime, necessitating as it would research in all the local archives of France. It appears, however, from fragmentary local research, that the influence of this committee was in fact na- tionwide and was much more marked than has been generally admitted. It will perhaps be necessary to revise certain commonly accepted theories regarding the machinery of the Revolutionary government, which is re- vealed not so mucb as the dictatorship of the "twelve who ruled" but rather as an uneasy co-operation, which often degenerated into an open rivalry, between the two heads of government, a rivalry which was translated locally in terms of straight fights between




the subordinate agents of the two committees.

With regard to the members of the Comite' de su'rete' generale, those other "twelve who ruled," if at present we are singularly lacking in biographical material concerning the individual members,29 we shall shortly once more be indebted to French research for the main thesis that M. Michel Eudes is preparing; it will offer a comprehensive picture of -this second great organ of state, the very administrator of Terror.30

The Comite de salut public is no doubt more familiar, most of its members having been the objects of biographical studies, but here again much remains to be done in so far as the actual administration of the committee is concerned. The subordinate agents of the great committee offer also far fewer difficulties to the researcher than the enormous swarm of commissaires who acted for the Comite de si'trete gene'rale, in that, being far less numerous, they are comparatively easy to trace. However, since Arne Ording's thesis,31 little has been added to our knowledge of the committee's delegates and sub- sidiary personnel, both in Paris and in the provinces, and of their conflicts with the agents of the rival police authority. On this subordinate and provincial level, there is an overabundance of fresh material, and it is only by the systematic use of the Se'rie L in the archives departementales and of the Serie D in the archives communales that a true -estimate may be reached of the administration of the Terror in the provinces. Even in the restricted field of the application of the lois des suspects, there exists at present only one really exhaustive study within the terri- torial limits of a district, and that was pub-

29 G. Belloni, Le comite de surete' ge'ne'rale (Paris, 1924); A. Tournier, Vadier (1896); A. Good- win, "The Underworld of the French Revolu- tionary Terror," Manchester Memoirs, XCVI (1954-55), No. 3.

30 M. Eudes is engaged on research for the doctorat-es-lettres: his these principale is devoted to the personnel and organization of the Comite de sulrete gene'rale. Professor Goodwin, of Manchester University is engaged on research on the first Committee of General Security and its subordinate agents.

31 Arne Ording, Le Bureau de Police du Cornitd de salut public (Oslo, 1930).

lished twenty years ago.32 Yet it is quite impossible to appreciate the efficiency of the Revolutionary government, to see in fact how it worked, if administration is not studied at least as far down as the level of the district, which was the key unit in the Revolutionary system, and of the commune -town or village. Until now, historians have too often confined themselves to administrative history on the governmental and assem- bly level. We shall continue to know little of the machinery of the Revolutionary government so long as we cannot follow the innumerable arrete's of the two committees down through the districts to rural comites de surveillance and conseils ge'ne'raux. Prob- ably the most singular merit of the twenty- odd men who ruled France during the Ter- ror was not so much that they spent sixteen hours a day transacting government business of every description but that, in a very large measure, they undoubtedly succeeded in get- ting their orders carried out almost every- where in France.

III In his report on the Napoleonic period,

Professor Holtman puts in a claim for the related fields of sociology, psychology, geography, and economics as both aids and instru- ments of the historian embarking on research. Few would disagree with the inclu- sion of geography and economics, but when the historian attempts to borrow both the terminology and the statistical approach of the sociologist or the psychologist, the re- sults are often extremely misleading and un- real, especially when "social statistics" are used. For example, statistics of occupation are unreliable if we cannot compute the de- gree of "social mobility" within related trades or from one trade to another. Further research reveals only too often that, of a hundred cordonniers listed at a given date, thirty or forty emerge a few months or a few years later as stonemasons, commissionnaires, domestiques, cooks, wine-merchants, or regular soldiers. This mobility was as noticeable in the great cities33 as in the

32 Georges Sangnier, La Terreur dans le Dis- trict de Saint-Pol (2 vols.; Blangermont, Pas-de- Calais, 1938).

i3 See for instance my article "Quelques con- s6quences sociales de la Revolution dans un milieu urbain, d'apr6s des documents de la



126 RICHARD COBB

rural areas, and M. Lefebvre emphasizes particularly the extreme fluidity of an over- populated countryside, teeming with a hun- gry and only seasonally employed population which was constantly on the move, much to the alarm of the local authorities and to the terror of property-holders.34 Considerable sections of the rural population of the Cantal, including even many smallholders, went to work in Spain for periods of five or six years, returning at intervals to arrondir their small holdings with new purchases made from their Spanish savings.35 Yet, in fiscal and administrative documents of the period, most of these would probably figure as pro prie- taires domicilie's. Paris itself absorbed a seasonal population of water-carriers from the Aveyron, commissionnaires from Savoy, marchands de peau de lapin from the Auvergne, horse-dealers from the Perche, marchands de salade from Lower Normandy, who might make the journey between the capital and their native provinces three or four times a year. Furthermore, every dearth would drive large sections of the rural population-smallholders as well as journaliers-onto the roads and into the big towns, in search of bread and employment.

There was probably an equally important seasonal exodus from the towns to the country, and at each harvest thousands of Parisian artisans would take on harvest work in the Brie, the Beauce, and the Pays de France, while the heavily populated district of Go- nesse would itself supply harvest labor to most of the surrounding corn-producing districts. We hear too of laborers coming froim S6zanne and Chateau-Thierry to gather in the corn of the great Brie wheatfields.36 Both gar(ons and master craftsmen in the luxury trades moved from town to town, often within periods of six to eight months. The old national frontiers were no obstacle to

Soci&e revolutionnaire de Lille," Revue d'histoire economique et sociale, XXXI (1956), 262-85.

34 Georges Lefebvre, La Grande Peur cle 1789 (Paris, 1932).

35 I have discussed this problem wvith regard to the Midi in a lecture to be published this year, "La crise economique de l'an III dans les departements du Midi."

36 See my article "Les disettes de l'an II et de I'an III dans le District de Nantes et la vallee de la Basse-Seine," Paris et Ile-de-France, III (1954), 227-5 1.

them: French goldsmiths, jewellers, and watchmakers sought work in London, Saint Petersburg and Berlin; cooks, hairdressers, and tailors, in all the European courts. In- habitants of Lille worked every day across the border in the Austrian Netherlands, and Lille itself contained a mobile population of Belgian craftsmen and apprentices. Paris housed large colonies of Prussian, Swiss, Sa- voy, and Italian artisans and servants. In the Norman towns there were English cotton engineers and operatives, dye manufacturers, and tradesmen.37

Moreover, late eighteenth-century French society was still almost as picaresque as in the days of Gil Blas, and probably the best commentary on the humbler sections of the community would be found in the person of Diderot's roving, impertinent, and resource- ful servant in Jacques le Fataliste. Although Arthur Young was amazed at the lack of circulation on France's truly magnificent highways, all the evidence points to a society tlhat was bursting at the seams, thanks to France's demographic strength. Even on the upper levels, owing to the great increase in speculative enterprises in the last five years of the ancien re'gime, fortunes were made and un- made as rapidly in speculation as in the prevalent scourge of gambling.38

No doubt recruitment absorbed part of the surplus population in the course of the

37 G. Vanier, "La mantufacture royale de fai- ence du faubourg Saint-Sever de Rouen," Actes du 81me Congres national des societes savantes.

38 In late eighteenth century, gambling was as much a popular as an aristocratic malady. That this was the case is apparent from the innumerable petitions from urban assemblies during the 1793-94 period demanding special legislation to prohibit this fltau des menages, and by the in- sistence placed by the Revolutionary mentality on the moral wickedness and the social and political evil of a devouring passion that ruined the family man and that kept him away from his duties as an active citizen, a member of the "Sovereign People," cards and dice obviously often proving a much stronger attraction than the rather insipid meetings of societes populaires and assembides sectionnaires. Gambling was certainly a more general passion than libertinage, which was confined mainly to the aristocracy. With reference to the increase both in Painbling and speculative activities in the course of the last five vears of the ancien reaime, see Arnauid de Lestapis, "Agiotage et corruption sous le baron de Batz," Miroir de l'histoire, 1956.




Revolution, and even more during the Em- pire, and it is possible that Napoleon's con- tinuous wars and their drain on manpower may be one of the reasons for the absence of serious popular disorders during the period 1796-1814. Certainly also the occupied countries offered many openings to the more un- scrupulous and energetic type of French ad- venturer who followed clos.e on the track of the armies, but they would hardly have drawn off any large element of population. It is evident, both from the rapports decadaires of the districts and later from those of the prefets and sous-prefets, that one of the main concerns of the local authorities remained the armies of vagrants and gens sans aveu, of deserters and poor laborers who continued to infest the highways and byways of France and who, at periods of particular stress, such as 1795-96, 1810-12, supplied the manpower for the roving bands of bandits and chauffeurs that terrorized the French farmer and that made even the routes of the diligences highly dangerous. Both the Revolutionary and Na- poleonic regimes failed to come to grips with the running sore of desertion, and the Em- pire, for all its reputation as an efficient, police-run regime, was a period of constant rural and highway crime and violence.

Not only does a society so mobile lend itself very little to accurate statistical study; a further difficulty arises from the impreci- sion of eighteenth-century definitions of trade categories. Contemporary documents will only rarely allow us to distinguish between master craftsmen and journeymen, between maU'tres and gar ons, and it is much more important for us to know how many maatres and how many gar(ons were members of a particular institution than to count the total number of shoemakers, watchmakers, cooks, and carpenters. The sort of evidence that can be of use to the social historian is more likely to be in the form of personal records that show an individual or a group of indi- viduals over a period of years, that is, in movement. Most purely statistical evidence is static. In order to stuidy a society, we need to know above all the movement both from trade to trade and from town to, town, or from town to country, in order to form some conception of the ladder of social advance- ment. For all these reasons, the historian is likely to find far more valuable material in the archives of the tribunaux de commerce,

in the bankruptcy suits that often contain inventories of stock as well as extremely illuminating personal biographies.39 than in the administrative reports of the prefets. All in all, the historian would be well advised to leave the exclusive use of statistical material to the present-day sociologist and demographer, both of whom deal with a society that is familiar and visible and that we can easily interpret. The limitations of an entirely statistical historical method are strikingly illustrated in a recent American work on the eighteenth-century French bourgeoisie.40

Furthermore, eighteenth-century statistics are often deliberately misleading, particularly when they come from official sources. No district or municipality could be counted on to give really accurate statistics of its population, even assuming it had the machinery to do so. If it was a question of recruitment, local authorities would deliberately reduce the figures known to them, in order to see the contingent lowered; if, on the other hand, it was a matter of grain requisitioning, they would as deliberately exaggerate the size of the population, in order to justify their natural desire to pre- vent the exodus of grain. Fiscal and price documents are equally unreliable in this respect.

So much for questions of method. Several of the research subjects proposed for the Empire period by Professor Holtman have already received attention from French historians. In the field of demographic h-istory, France, with its review Population and with such able historians as Louis Chevalier and Pierre Goubert, is probably ahead of all other countries, and numerous French historians have succeeded in making good use of demographic techniques without falling into the jargon and statistical automatism affected by many, pure demographers. Probably the best recent example of how demographic material may be most effectively handled by the historian is the work carried out by both Jean

39 In Paris these are kept at the Archives de la Seine. M. Fletury, archiviste de In Seine, has recently completed an inventory of the numerous papers of the tribun??aulx de commerce during the Revolution and Empire? especiallv for the nine- teenth-century period.

40 Elinor G. Barber, The Bourgeoisie in Eight- eenth-Century France (Princeton, N. J., 1955).



128 RICHARD COBB

Meuvret and Pierre Goubert on French rural communities in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, with particular references to the great famines of the latter years of the reign of Louis XIV, culminating in 1709, I'annee du froid.41 It is certainly useful for the historian to be au fait with recent demographic techniques,42 but his first task remains that of selecting his material, and eighteenth-century documentation will not permit him to make do with official statistical information. In particular, Goubert's most valuable statistical calculations are based on patient research in many scattered village records and parish registers.43

One is surprised to read that "no study has been made of the regulation of new crops."44 It is true that the works of Octave Festy are confined to the Revolution, the Directory, and the Consulate, but much valuable information may be derived from them con- *cerning a later period in the course of which there were few startling innovations in agri- -cultural methods.45 The dearth of 1810-12,46

41 Pierre Goubert, "En Beauvaisis: ProbWmes demographiques du XVIIP si6cle," Annales (Eicon- om-ies-Societe-hs-Civilisations), VII (1952), 453-68; Jean Meuvret, "Les crises des subsistances et la demographie de la France d'ancien regime," Population, October-December 1946, pp. 634-50.

42 M. Henry, "Demographie du passe: Registres paroissiaux et genealogies," Bulletin de la Socie'te d'histoire moderne, October-December 1954, pp. 5-13. This is an extremely valuable introduction to demographic techniques, by a demographer, for the benefit of the general historian.

43 Pierre Goubert, "Une richesse historique en cours d'exploitation: les registres paroissiaux," Annales (Economies-Societe's-Civilisations), IX (1954), 83-93. For further discussion on the value of statistical material for demographic studies, see: Octave Festy, "Les mouvements de la population franSaise du debut de la Revolution au Consulat et leurs causes," Annales hist. de la Rev. fr., No. 138 (1955), pp. 2749; Marcel Rein- hard, "La Revolution francaise et le probUWme de la population," Population, July-September 1946; idem, "Les repercussions demographiques des crises de subsistances au XVIIIP sikle," Actes du 81me Congres national des societe's savantes, pp. 68-86, with special reference to population trends in Normandy; my article, "Disette et mor- talite: La crise de l'an III et de l'an IV a Rouen," Annales de Normandie, 1956, Nos. 34, pp. 267-91.

44 Journal of Modern History, XXIX, 94. 45 Daniel Faucher, "La revolution agricole du

wine-growing and the general agricultural and economic patterns of the Mediterranean departements during the Empire have all been the objects of extremely well docu- mented articles in leading French reviews.47 What is mostly lacking for this period is a proper study of the economic exploitation of the food resoLurces of the "satellite" countries in favor of France's tightly packed population.

IV Professor Parker subscribes to the thesis

already propounded by M. Godechot in La grande nation and by Professor Palmer, in his joint report with M. Godechot at the Rome Congress, that the French Revolution was merely the "French phase" of a "cycle of Revolutions" covering the period from the 1770's to the 1840's and variously described as the "Revolution of the West," the "At- lantic Revolution," or even as the "World Revolution." Mr. Biro, in his recent study of the German policy of Revolutionary France, goes so far as to state that "it is the consensus of scholarly opinion today that the Revolu- tion was not a French Revolution, but a world revolution."48 Professor Parker claims more modestly for this thesis that "it harmo- nizes with historical reality." Is one to understand from this that there was in fact no such thing as a French Revolution? If we are faced merely with a French phase of a general phenomenon, then there will nat- urally be a certain temptation for the student to neglect the internal history of the movement within France-deprived as it will be of most of its significance-in favor of a "broad sweep" of research on "idea history." If the protagonists of this thesis are prepared to accept explanations other than ideological

XVIIIP-XIX- si&le," Bulletin de la Socie'te d'histoire moderne, November-December 1956, pp. 2-11.

46 Pierre Leon, "La crise des subsistances de 1810-1812 dans le departement de I'Is&re," Annales hist. de la Rev. fr., XXIV (1952), 289-310.

47 Jean Vidalenc, "Notes sur la vigne en France de 1789 a la fin de la Restauration," Annales de la Faculte' des Lettres d'Aix, XXIX (n.d.), 139-76, and "La vie economique des departements m6diterran6ens pendant l'Empire," Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, July-September 1954, pp. 165-98.

48 S. S. Biro, The German Policy of Revolu- tionary France (2 vols.; Cambridge, Mass., 1957).




and intellectual currents, they must prove that there was, not only in Europe, but also in America, a general economic crisis accom- panied by a precipitous rise in prices, a dearth, and a series of state bankruptcies. And if they are of this opinion, why did the Revolution break out in France alone, and not in all the other countries that were going through a similar crisis? But, in fact, the economic crisis and the grain failure seem to have been confined to France and not to have been merely French aspects of a general disaster such as that which spread over most of Europe in 1795. This is not to deny that the influence of the American war and of revolutionary ideas played a part in the genesis of the Revolution: they were certainly one of the elements in a conjoncture that produced a revolutionary situation, but that "revolutionary situation" occurred only in France.

The principal danger of such a thesis is that it denies that revolutions are ultimately made by people rather than by "ideas." It is an aristocratic conception of history that would totally eliminate the Paris sans-culotte, the rural peasant, the popular movement in France as factors in the genesis of a specifically French situation and in the later progress of the Revolutionary movement in France. It is also an international conception, in the most unhistorical sense, in that it eliminates the specific element of French Revolutionary patriotism. France has already been deprived of a considerable part of her sovereignty; now, it seems, she is even to lose one of the most important parts of her national history!49

V

In his summing-up, Professor Stewart ap- peals for more works of the "Wider Vision" school. But before we can attempt any general reassessment of the period under review, it is necessary first to tap the immense resources still available in French public records. Is it not generally agreed that the first duty of the historian is to make available to his fellows new material, new evidence, before settling down to the less immediate task

49 As an antidote to the "Atlantic Revolution" thesis, see George Rudes lucid exposition of the origins of the Revolution: "The Outbreak of the French Revolution," Past and Present, No. 8 (November 1955), pp. 28-42.

of attempting to gain for historical writing a more general public? It will indeed be a sad day for our profession when the dis- covery of new material is proclaimed to be not the principal aim of historical studies.

This being admitted-and far too many books published on French history in Eng- land and the United States are based only on printed material-the first task of the Eng- lish or American director of studies is to suggest to his research students subjects that are, above all, related to documentary realities. It should be the primary duty of the specialist to acquaint himself very thoroughly with the various fonds of the French public records, so that he may offer guidance to the young researcher.50 The latter should also be directed to follow with closer attention the articles appearing in the leading French provincial reviews, of which there are over a dozen.51

It also follows that, with the exception of such subjects as emigration, foreign trade, diplomatic relations, or the impact of the Revolution on English and American life, the student of the French Revolution and the Empire must eventually work in France, in the French national and local records. It is both a waste of time and a "deflowering" of often first-rate subjects to attempt to write the internal history of France from the seclu- sion of English or American libraries, however well they may be equipped. The student who undertakes research on French history without ever working in France not only will fail, in all probability, to discover any new evidence, but will also fail to understand French history.

It may be objected that we should leave

50 This task becomes easier every year thanks to the increasing number of inventaires of the Serie L (Re'volution) of the archives departementales. There exist such printed inventories for over thirty departments, including those most populated, like the Nord, the Rhone, the Seine- inferieure. Most of these inventories may be pur- chased through the French Ministere de l'Educa- tion Nationale. A number of inventories of archives communales have likewise been published.

5'1 Particularly, Revue du Nord, Annales de Normandie, Annales de Bretagne, L'Anjou historique, Annales de Bourgogne, Annales de l'Est, Annales du Midi, La Provence historique, Ca- Iiiers d'h istoire (Grenoble-Lyon-Clermont), Paris et Ile-de-France (Memoires), Revue d'histoire de Bordeaux, Atudes ardennaises.



130 RICHARD COBB

this sort of thing to the French, who are probably better equipped than most of us to undertake the kind of austere documentary research I have been suggesting as the most fruitful object of future studies. Certainly it is true that France is blessed both with admirable and industrious historians and with a system of doctorat-es-lettres that obliges candidates to undertake really exhaustive research and to produce their findings in the fullness of their years. But I do not think this is a valid argument. If it were, all of us who are European specialists had as well take our places in the soup queue or move over to English or American history. For one thing, our main function is to explain the Revolution in terms that will be under- standable to our own countrymen, and for that we are better equipped than the French. Second, with the advantage of our knowledge of our own national histories, it is quite possible that, in the course of our research in French records, we may see things that are not immediately apparent to the French eye, and, in any case, our angle of vision will be different, just as our curiosity may take us into places that have not been explored by the local erudite or even the national historian.

Perhaps what is most needed is much closer co-ordination between French and foreign specialists of the period. The first thing to remember is that the French have more to give us than we can give them, and, in my personal experience, I have never met a French historian who was not generous with his advice, suggestions, and notes. Nearly all French historians can offer us a lesson in solid hard work, and I doubt whether a finer research tradition, which is, incidentally still largely artisanal, the French relying little on the mechanical devices of our modern historian-technocrats, could be found any- where else in Europe or the Americas. As for future subjects of research, the local history of the Revolution and the Empire remains still to be written, particularly in so far as the popular movement and the development of society are concerned. There are over eighty archives de'partementales, almost as many archives communales as there are lo- calities in the Dictionnaire des Communes published by the Ministere des Postes, Tele- graphes et Telephones, and an immense amount of work to be done.

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF WALES, ABERYSTWY TH



the era of the french revolution: some comments on opportunities for research and writing

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