1 XI 2007
It took me a while to finish reading Georges Lefebvre’s Coming of the French Revolution; though the book (R.R. Palmer translation, Princeton UP) is not of great length, I have delayed its reading too long for other matters, important or not. So a few things can be said on the book and the subject matter:
1. Lefebvre divides the “revolution” into a few parts, the aristocratic revolution, the bourgeois revolution, the popular revolution, and the peasant revolution. In each time the revolution evolves in scale, though it can also be noted that in each time the revolution loses more sense to create a larger, mass movement with neither direction nor leadership. By the time that the revolution declines into a popular one, can we truly identify figures that dominates enough to direct the movement? No, Sieyes and Mirabeau were certainly figures too cautious to follow these movements; and La Fayette? A hero of both revolutions? Or a member of the dying aristocracy? Movements seem to be stirred by general feelings, i.e. irrational; while movements happened, not even its participants were aware of their historical importance. Hence, the need for bread caused one of the most revolutionary, and horrifying, for that matter, event of human history.
2. In terms of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, its meaning is more symbolic than actual–though the replacement of privileges by “rights” calls for the beginning of a new age. The revolution, however, was more than a smooth judiciary change; the irrational part is to play its role soon after.
3. The role that Louis XVI plays in this scenario is ridiculous. Without a charismatic claim to legitimacy, without a rational system of law beyond his position, his inability to effectively use the force of coercion make his legitimacy of tradition very thin. Again, an example of a mediocrity placed in an unfortunate environment.
