1789: Rights, Violence, and the King in Chains

The first phase of the Revolution moved fast, and not always in the direction its authors intended.

The National Assembly declared itself the Constituent Assembly in June 1789 and immediately began the work of remaking France. On August 4, in a nightlong session that became legendary, nobles and clergy began voluntarily surrendering their privileges — feudal dues abolished, noble hunting rights eliminated, church tithes ended. It happened so quickly that contemporaries called it a collective fever.

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, passed on August 26, 1789, was the conceptual centerpiece. "Men are born free and remain free and equal in rights." Liberty, property, security, resistance to oppression — declared universal. Sovereignty resided in the nation, not the king. The document drew heavily from Enlightenment theory and, notably, from the American Declaration of Independence.

But rights declarations and material reality moved at different speeds. The Constituent Assembly had created new national institutions while France was still starving. The October Days brought the crisis to a head. A crowd of Parisian women, driven by bread prices, marched to Versailles — hours away on foot — and forced the royal family to return to Paris, where they could be watched.

Louis XVI was now effectively a prisoner in Paris. The constitutional monarchy the Assembly was designing assumed a willing king — one who accepted that sovereignty had shifted. Louis did not accept this, not really. He negotiated with foreign powers. He signed the Constitution of 1791, which limited his power to a suspensive veto, but had already secretly been negotiating with his wife Marie Antoinette's nephew, the Austrian Emperor Leopold II.

In June 1791, the royal family attempted to flee France to join foreign armies massing on the border — the Flight to Varennes. They were recognized by a postmaster in the small town of Varennes and returned to Paris under humiliating escort. The fiction that Louis was a willing constitutional monarch was shattered. Revolutionary opinion polarized. The moderates who had hoped for a stable constitutional monarchy now faced radicals demanding a republic.

The foreign invasion feared by the Assembly materialized. In April 1792, France declared war on Austria. The armies did not go well. Foreign troops advanced. In August 1792, a mob stormed the Tuileries Palace and the Legislative Assembly suspended the king. Louis was imprisoned in the Temple. The monarchy was over.

1789: Rights, Violence, and the King in Chains

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