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All 745 seats in the Legislative Assembly 373 seats needed for a majority | |||
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| Turnout | ~4,300,000 | ||
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Legislative elections were held in France between 29 August and 5 September 1791 and were the first national elections to the Legislature. They took place during a period of turmoil caused by the Flight and Arrest at Varennes, the Jacobin split, the Champ-de-Mars Massacre and the Pillnitz Declaration. Suffrage was limited to men paying taxes, although less than 25% of those eligible to do so voted. [1]
The Flight to Varennes, also known as the Flight of Louis XVI, on 20 June 1791 caused unrest in the Constituent Assembly and helped to discredit the constitutional monarchy in the eyes of the Parisian patriots. Even though the deputies arrested both Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette the very next day, in the minds of some, the Republic became a possible regime. The Constituante, which on the whole remained monarchist and legalist, declared that Louis XVI had been kidnapped and was therefore not guilty, in response to an influx of petitions calling for the King's deposition. This stance led to a petition being lodged by over 6,000 people on the Champ-de-Mars, while the moderates united in support of the threatened king and, on 17 July 1791, used this demonstration, which had been declared contrary to the Constitution, as a pretext to restore order. However, this return to order led to bloody repression during the Champ-de-Mars massacre. [2]
This bloody clash, which claimed 50 victims, created a rift between the democratic revolutionaries and the liberal bourgeoisie; it was the culmination of several months of social convulsions and revolutionary agitation. [3] The day before, supporters of the king and the Constitution had split from the Jacobins and decided to create their own faction in the Rue Saint-Honoré, in the former Convent of the Feuillants, whose name they took. At the same time, Louis XVI was restored to his throne by the decrees of 15 and 16 July 1791. On the 14th of September 1791, he accepted the revised Constitution, the executive branch of which had been strengthened, and swore an oath of allegiance the following day. [4] The deputies of the Constituent Assembly went their separate ways on 30 September 1791, believing that they had completed the union of royalty and the censorious bourgeoisie against the popular upsurge and the aristocratic counter-revolution. [5] For the vast majority of them, the Revolution was over. [6]
In July 1791 the National Constituent Assembly created a constitution committee of 30 members, which drew up a constitution adopted on 3 September. This provided for a 745-seat Legislative Assembly with members elected for a two-year term. [7]
The representative system put in place by the Constituents for the 1791 election had the sole aim of selecting deputies who, in the name of the nation, would be free of any hindrance or control to exercise sovereignty; in fact, the election was merely a function granted by the nation to a few citizens recognised as suitable to serve it in order to legitimise and constitute the Legislative Assembly. [8]
The law required the electors to assemble when summoned, to check the credentials of the citizens present, to elect a bureau and then to make appointments. These assemblies were prohibited from deliberating, adopting by-laws, supplementing their choices with instructions or mandatory mandates, and from corresponding with each other. Finally, they had to separate once their work was done. As soon as the results are announced, the elected representatives escape their electors and, regardless of the constituency that elected them, derive their authority from the nation as a whole. [8]
This practice allows the elections to take place, like those that follow, in a total political vacuum, i.e. with no publicly debated issues; there is no public competition between candidates, no programme and no declared candidates. This political vacuum, which has become the rule, is leading to the emergence of a debate on political support through illegal organisations, on the fringes and outside any legitimacy. The absence of issues and declared candidacies - the law recognises nothing between the state and individual citizens - favours the control of the electoral machine by those who, being in a better position, can then impose their political choices on the various ballots and choose the men.
The Constitution of 1791, which had been examined and reexamined relentlessly since August 1789 and from which the Constituents had set themselves the goal of not parting until it was completed, was adopted on 3 September 1791, after more than two years of effort. The National Constituent Assembly had given the country a new administration, organised communal powers and districts where the elections had elected rather young men. It offered the French, who were weary of unrest, anxiety and passion, a regime that was fairly favourable to freedom - enough for the supporters of the counter-revolution to want to overthrow it - even if it did not guarantee them the fullness of human rights. [9] On 16 May 1791, the Constituents decreed that none of their members could stand for re-election in the next legislature; the new deputies were therefore new men who would be responsible for implementing the new Constitution. [10]
The electoral law adopted by the National Constituent Assembly on 4 December 1789 divided citizens into two categories: "active" citizens, who paid taxes and had the right to vote, and "passive" citizens, who did not pay taxes and could not vote. The voting system adopted for this first election in France was the two-tier suffrage censary:
Women ^ and servants [15] could not vote or stand as candidates, nor could citizens in a state of indictment, bankruptcy or insolvency. [16] In these circumstances, the exercise of suffrage, whatever the system, "censal or universal", was a matter for the minorities whose candidates competed for votes. [17] [8]
Michel Vovelle noted that it is difficult to estimate French participation in politics during the Revolution because electoral systems differed, suffrage education was difficult and sources of information were inadequate. [18] Nonetheless, most historians agree today that the number of voters excluded by the census remained fairly low; it seems that in rural areas most citizens were active citizens, unlike in the cities where no more than a third of men could vote. [19] The number of citizens commonly accepted as being able to go to the polls is estimated at nearly 4.3 million, compared with 3 million who cannot. However, Jacques Godechot warns that these figures have never been seriously evaluated. [20]
Around 4.3 million men voted in the election. [21] There were no formal political parties, although informal groups such as the Feuillants, Jacobins and the Réunion club emerged. [22] While later sources make claims about membership figures for groups and assign alternative names to them, including Girondistes, Lamethistes or Constitutionnels, the sources do not list the membership of the groups. [22]
Of the 767 members during the Assembly's term, 278 only ever cast 'no' votes to motions, while 242 only ever voted 'yes'. [22]
The newly-elected Assembly convened for the first time on 1 October. [23]
François-Noël Babeuf, also known as Gracchus Babeuf, was a French proto-communist, revolutionary, and journalist of the French Revolutionary period. His newspaper Le tribun du peuple was best known for its advocacy for the poor and calling for a popular revolt against the Directory, the government of France. He was a leading advocate for democracy and the abolition of private property. He angered the authorities who were clamping down hard on their radical enemies. In spite of the efforts of his Jacobin friends to save him, Babeuf was executed for his role in the Conspiracy of the Equals.
Antoine Pierre Joseph Marie Barnave was a French politician, and, together with Honoré Mirabeau, one of the most influential orators of the early part of the French Revolution. He is most notable for correspondence with Marie Antoinette in an attempt to set up a constitutional monarchy and for being one of the founding members of the Feuillants.
The National Constituent Assembly was a constituent assembly in the Kingdom of France formed from the National Assembly on 9 July 1789 during the first stages of the French Revolution. It dissolved on 30 September 1791 and was succeeded by the Legislative Assembly.
The Society of the Friends of the Constitution, renamed the Society of the Jacobins, Friends of Freedom and Equality after 1792 and commonly known as the Jacobin Club or simply the Jacobins, was the most influential political club during the French Revolution of 1789. The period of its political ascendancy includes the Reign of Terror, during which well over 10,000 people were put on trial and executed in France, many for political crimes.
The following is a timeline of the French Revolution.
The Girondins, or Girondists, were a political group during the French Revolution. From 1791 to 1793, the Girondins were active in the Legislative Assembly and the National Convention. Together with the Montagnards, they initially were part of the Jacobin movement. They campaigned for the end of the monarchy, but then resisted the spiraling momentum of the Revolution, which caused a conflict with the more radical Montagnards. They dominated the movement until their fall in the insurrection of 31 May – 2 June 1793, which resulted in the domination of the Montagnards and the purge and eventual mass execution of the Girondins. This event is considered to mark the beginning of the Reign of Terror.
Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve was a French writer and politician who served as the second mayor of Paris, from 1791 to 1792, and the first regular president of the National Convention in 1792. During the French Revolution, he was associated with the moderate Girondins, and voted against the immediate execution of Louis XVI at the king's trial in January 1793, though he supported a suspended sentence. This led to Pétion's proscription by the Convention alongside other Girondin deputies following the radical insurrection of 31 May – 2 June 1793, and ultimately his suicide together with fellow-Girondin François Buzot while evading arrest during the Terror.
The National Convention was the constituent assembly of the Kingdom of France for one day and the French First Republic for its first three years during the French Revolution, following the two-year National Constituent Assembly and the one-year Legislative Assembly. Created after the great insurrection of 10 August 1792, it was the first French government organized as a republic, abandoning the monarchy altogether. The Convention sat as a single-chamber assembly from 20 September 1792 to 26 October 1795.
The French Second Republic, officially the French Republic, was the second republican government of France. It existed from 1848 until its dissolution in 1852.
This glossary of the French Revolution generally does not explicate names of individual people or their political associations; those can be found in List of people associated with the French Revolution.
The Paris Commune during the French Revolution was the government of Paris from 1789 until 1795. Established in the Hôtel de Ville just after the storming of the Bastille, it consisted of 144 delegates elected by the 60 divisions of the city. Before its formal establishment, there had been much popular discontent on the streets of Paris over who represented the true Commune, and who had the right to rule the Parisian people. The first mayor was Jean Sylvain Bailly, a relatively moderate Feuillant who supported constitutional monarchy. He was succeeded in November 1791 by Pétion de Villeneuve after Bailly's unpopular use of the National Guard to disperse a riotous assembly in the Champ de Mars.
The French Constitution of 1791 was the first written constitution in France, created after the collapse of the absolute monarchy of the Ancien Régime. One of the basic precepts of the French Revolution was adopting constitutionality and establishing popular sovereignty.
The Storming of the Bastille occurred in Paris, France, on 14 July 1789, when revolutionary insurgents attempted to storm and seize control of the medieval armoury, fortress and political prison known as the Bastille. After four hours of fighting and 94 deaths the insurgents were able to enter the Bastille. The governor de Launay and several members of the garrison were killed after surrender. The Bastille then represented royal authority in the centre of Paris. The prison contained only seven inmates at the time of its storming and was already scheduled for demolition, but was seen by the revolutionaries as a symbol of the monarchy's abuse of power. Its fall was the flashpoint of the French Revolution.
François Furet was a French historian and president of the Saint-Simon Foundation, best known for his books on the French Revolution. From 1985 to 1997, Furet was a professor of French history at the University of Chicago.
The aim of a number of separate policies conducted by various governments of France during the French Revolution ranged from the appropriation by the government of the great landed estates and the large amounts of money held by the Catholic Church to the termination of Christian religious practice and of the religion itself. There has been much scholarly debate over whether the movement was popularly motivated or motivated by a small group of revolutionary radicals. These policies, which ended with the Concordat of 1801, formed the basis of the later and less radical laïcité policies.
Jacques Guillaume Thouret was a French Girondin revolutionary, lawyer, president of the National Constituent Assembly and victim of the guillotine.
The Society of the Friends of the Constitution, better known as Feuillants Club, was a political grouping that emerged during the French Revolution. It came into existence on 16 July 1791. The assembly split between the Feuillants on the right, who sought to preserve the position of the king and supported the proposed plan of the National Constituent Assembly for a constitutional monarchy; and the radical Jacobins on the left, who wished to press for a continuation of the overthrow of Louis XVI. It represented the last and most vigorous attempt of the moderate constitutional monarchists to steer the course of the revolution away from the radical Jacobins.
Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre was a French lawyer and statesman, widely recognized as one of the most influential and controversial figures of the French Revolution. Robespierre fervently campaigned for the voting rights of all men and their unimpeded admission to the National Guard. Additionally he advocated for the right to petition, the right to bear arms in self-defence, and the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade.
Jean-François Varlet was a leader of the Enragés faction during the French Revolution. He was important in the fall of the monarchy and the Insurrection of 31 May – 2 June 1793.
The term "Red Priests" or "Philosopher Priests" is a modern historiographical term that refers to Catholic priests who, to varying degrees, supported the French Revolution (1789-1799). The term "Red Priests" was coined in 1901 by Gilbert Brégail and later adopted by Edmond Campagnac. However, it is anachronistic because the color red, associated with socialist movements since 1848, did not signify supporters of the French Revolution, who were referred to as "Blues" during the civil wars of 1793–1799, in contrast to the royalist "Whites." Hence, a recent historian suggested using the term "Philosopher Priests" to describe this group, a term used at the time to refer to these priests.
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