Scribd
Upload
469 views2 pages

Albert Soboul - The Sans Culottes

The document discusses the complex revolutionary history in France and the succession of stages due to antagonisms between social classes. It focuses on the role of the urban masses, particularly the people of Paris, who were deeply committed to the revolution from 1789 to 1795. Historians have debated whether popular action was directed by or against the bourgeoisie, and integrated into the bourgeois revolution, or a precursor to later social struggles. The sans-culottes claimed rights over taxation and regulation of foodstuffs and commerce, which the Jacobin bourgeoisie reluctantly granted under pressure. The sans-culottes tolerated neither pride nor disdain and arrested those with aristocratic sentiments, seeing themselves as opposed not just to aristocrats but

Uploaded by

Marijan Kraljević
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
469 views2 pages

Albert Soboul - The Sans Culottes

The document discusses the complex revolutionary history in France and the succession of stages due to antagonisms between social classes. It focuses on the role of the urban masses, particularly the people of Paris, who were deeply committed to the revolution from 1789 to 1795. Historians have debated whether popular action was directed by or against the bourgeoisie, and integrated into the bourgeois revolution, or a precursor to later social struggles. The sans-culottes claimed rights over taxation and regulation of foodstuffs and commerce, which the Jacobin bourgeoisie reluctantly granted under pressure. The sans-culottes tolerated neither pride nor disdain and arrested those with aristocratic sentiments, seeing themselves as opposed not just to aristocrats but

Uploaded by

Marijan Kraljević
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

The antagonisms that rapidly manifested themselves between the various strata of the bourgeoisie as well as

between the bourgeoisie and the sans-culottes, artisans and shopkeepers, then, account for the complexity of
revolutionary history and the succession of its various stages. Albert Mathiez went so far as to diStinguish between
four successive revolutions, the last of which, that of June 2, 1793 (13 Prairial, year 1), ended
in an attempt at a social democracy.

Every historian of the Revolution has stressed the role played by the urban masses, particularly by the people of
Paris; the Revolution was to a large extent their making. From the spring of 1789 to the spring of 1795, from the
fourteenth of July to Prairial, year m, they consecrated their energy to it. They placed all their hopes in it. They
lived and suffered for it.

First by Thiers, who, here and there, stresses the role played by the Parisian sections and the autonomy of their
activity. In regard to foodstuffs, for example, he briefly points out the antagonism that existed in February 1793
between the sections, which demanded price-fixing, and the Jac0- bins, who condemned it as being dangerous to
the freedom of commerce.

To write a history of the sections of Paris is not just a matter of talking about the Revolution, but, at least from 1792
onwards, of writing a history of the Parisian sanS-Culottes.

"The struggle was, as it is today, between the workers and powerful bourgeoisie." But this is to forget that for the
sans-culottes the aristocracy was the basic enemy; it confuses the journeyman artisan with the factory worker. This
is not a "simple question of differences of modality"; it is a very fundamental difference.

Therefore, most of the historians, whether they considered popular action to be under the wing of the bourgeoisie
and essentially directed against the aristocracy and the ancien regime, and thus integrated perfectly into the
bourgeois revolution, or whether they saw it as a precursory movement of the social struggles of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, have a tendency to underestimate the original and specific character of the popular
revolution.

These events (rujan 5 I 6 1793.) had no precedent in the general trend of the Revolution: the sanS-Culottes claimed
rights to the taxation of foodstuffs and over the regulations regarding their commerce, which the Jacobin
bourgeoisie granted them on September 29, 1793 (Vendemiaire, yearn), but under pressure.

I 1.

The principal charge against Gannal, iron merchant from the Reunion section, arrested on 7 Frimaire, was his
"haughty manner toward his workers." Paul Bonjour, adjutant in the fourth division of the naval ministry, was
denounced in Frimaire by the popular society of Poissonniere, less for having been first valet of
the wardrobe to a former member of Court than for having preserved the tone and manners of Court; his face
alone betrays "the movements of a heart gangrened with aristocratic sentiments."

It was difficult, therefore, for any person of the old regime to find favor in their eyes, even when there
was no specific charge against him. "For such men are incapable of bringing themselves to the heights of our
revolution; their hearts are always full of pride and we shall never forget their former grandeur and their
domination over us."
The sanS-Culottes tolerated neither pride nor disdain; those were aristocratic sentiments contrary to
the spirit of fraternity that existed between equal citizens and implied a hostile political stand toward democracy
as practiced by the sanS-Culottes in their general assemblies and in their popular societies. These character
traits appeared frequently in reports justifying the arrest of suspects.

Incivism – manjak lojalnosti prema principima revolucije.

Even more serious, according to the sans-eulottes, than a haughty or disdainful manner toward themselves or
straightforward indifference were statements referring to them as being of a lower social order.

The address of he sanS-culottes society of Beaucaire before the Convention of September 8, 1793, is significant:
"We are sans. culottes . . . poor and virtuous, we have formed a society of artisans and peasants . . . we know who
our friends are: those who freed us from the clergy and from the nobility, from feudalism, from tithes, from royalty
and from all the plagues that follow in its wake; we are those whom the aristocrats call anarchists, factionists,
Maratists."

An address delivered before the Convention on 27 Vent6se mentioned the brave sans-culottes, who were opposed
not only to the clergy, the nobility, royal coalitions, but also to attorneys, lawyers, notaries and also all "those fat
farmers, those egotists, and those fat, rich merchants: they're at war against us, and not against our tyrants."

The sans-culottes were not against property already owned by artisans and shopkeepers, and which journeymen
aspired to possess, provided that it was limited.

On May 5, 1793, near the Church of Saint-Germain-I'Auxerrois, Mistress Saunier was arrested for having "shouted
out loud that it was necessary to start August 10 all over again, and to assassinate and slit the throats of all the
rich people." In the year m similar proposals, even if suggested during the previous year, would have provided a
motive for arrest. Delavier, wigmaker from BonneNouvelle, was arrested on 12 Germinal for having boasted·
he had led the rich condemned by the Revolutionary Tribunal to the scaffold. Viguier, from the Poissonniere
section, also a wigmaker, arrested on 5 Prairial, had stated "no one would be happy until the rich and the
dandies have been wiped out.'' In Amis-de-la-Patrie Pierre Portier was arrested on 10 Prairial: on various
occasions "he had expressed jealousy toward the rich." When sectional power was in the hands of the
sanSculottes, full of animosity or hatred toward the rich, they did not fail to take discriminatory action against
them. Wealth was often the motive for suspicion. Although wealth was rarely the only motive invoked, it often lent
support to vague accusations.

The same charges were made against one Santerre, a former butter;ind-muslin merchant from Faubourg-du.Nord,
arrested on 24 Germinal: he had a private income; "his relatives have always moved in moneyed, that is to say,
aristocratic circles"; "he has grown fat off the sweat of wage earners.

You might also like