French Revolution

The French Revolution of 1789 is one of the most important events of the modern world. Inequality in French society was a major factor behind the revolution. The popular aphorism that “nobles were to prey, clergy were to pray, and people were to pay” sums up the condition of the people in general on the eve of the French Revolution. Class division was endemic in the contemporary societies of Europe, but in France the gap between the rich and the poor was increasing day by day. A decadent feudal order was clinging to its privileges, while the cry of the philosophes (philosophers) was “equality, liberty, and fraternity.”

Nobility and clergy formed the two higher echelons of the society, and the rest were commoners, a heterogeneous group consisting of artisans, the bourgeoisie, urban poor, laborers, lawyers, intellectuals, and shopkeepers. Even among the aristocracy, there was division over power and wealth, and when the revolution occurred, the “unprivileged” elite like the lower clergy [Page 403]joined the mainstream. The ancien régime (ancient regime) could not check the spontaneous outburst of anger against poverty and oppression. The term sans-culottes (without knee-breeches) was applied to the poorer sections of rural and urban areas.

On the whole, the commoners constituted about 95 to 97 percent of the population and the peasants formed the majority of this group. The proportion of the whole population engaged in agriculture in France in the 1750s was about 60 percent. They indulged in cultivation or work on vines after getting land either on rent or lease from the higher section of the society. The métayers (sharecroppers) shared with the landlord half the produce. It was this bulk of people who were reeling under poverty in France because of atrocious taxes, a nonchalant royalty, and rising prices.

The corvée, a kind of unpaid labor for making the roads or alternatively making payments, was in existence. There were also the taille (direct tax on personal income), gabelle (salt tax), aides (excise duty on wines), and vingtième (a tax levied on income, “twentieth” tax) on the commoners. The higher two classes were exempted from the tax burden, which was paid by cultivators, wage earners, shopkeepers, artisans, and the professional classes.

An array of taxes like charges for bridges, roads, markets, and transfers of land also was prevalent. These dues made life miserable for the general masses, who were paying higher prices for the cost of goods purchased. Grain prices had increased by about 60 percent. For the common people, escalation of prices by 65 percent, along with wage increases of 22 percent between 1785 and 1789, worsened the economic condition. A cultivator could keep only 18 francs for himself out of the total earning of 100 francs. The land was producing less and the portion cultivated grew less. The diet of an ordinary peasant in the country consisted of black bread and roots. The métayers had to sell household goods out of poverty. Many burned the bedsteads for protection from the cold. The gradual transformation of society from agricultural to industrial resulted in a loss of jobs. Cities like Paris were getting overcrowded with the hungry because of migration from rural areas as a result of poverty. But they could not get any work. The scarcity of food, bad harvests, and the increase in the price of bread were making people's lives miserable. The poor artisans of Paris became the politicized group because of a high literacy rate.

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