We've seen that one of the great hopes of the revolution of 1789 was a new era of fraternity, of harmony, or regeneration. Where members of the privileged orders, the clergy and the nobility would hence forth join with members of the third estate in creating a new fronts. A regenerated fronts in which everybody could take advantage of their abilities in a new world of liberty and equality. The national assembly after 1789 for the extraordinary talent and energy into the task of regenerating, of redesigning, of remaking France. And it's achievements are celebrated across the country. But notably, here in Paris on the 14th of July, 1790. These are celebrations, as I explained last time, which happen up and down the country. Let's go way down to the furthest extremity of the country. About 900 kilometers away from Paris. To one of the poorest parts of France in terms of economic livelihood. There in a small village is still today a doorway and above it a carving. And it's one that you'll recognize as being the key image of this course. That someone in that village, in 1790 had decided to recognize what the revolution had achieved by putting a rough carving of the above the doorway. It's in recognition of the extraordinary achievements of the national assembly of 1789 to 1791. But it already indicates one of the tensions that is yet to be resolved because for people in a small and poor village like this, the single most significant thing about the revolution of 1789 they believed was the evolution of feudalism. And the insistence of the national assembly that the main harvest dues required some form of compensation to the lords before they could be abolished completely is to remain an ongoing issue for people in the countryside. It's to be one of the issues that rumbles away in the background as rural communities across the country are frustrated by the unwillingness of the National Assembly, simply, to abolish the Seigneurial Regime all together. But there are other sources of emerging tension and disappointment as well. Across the southern crescent of the country, large numbers of communities where there were significant numbers of Protestants. People certainly who had not had the right to worship in public as Protestants, but who had remained loyal to their faith. One of the critical things about the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was that is made quite clear, that in future people could not be troubled for their religious beliefs. Across the kingdom, Protestants and Jews celebrate the revolution of 1789. As having brought them freedom to worship as they wanted. The problem is, that in parts of the south in particular, there are ancient Protestant Catholic tensions. In two towns in particular, in Montauban and Nimes. Where there were small, but very wealthy minorities of Protestants, who dominated economic life. There is anxiety, suspicion, opposition. From the mass of the Catholic population who often work in large textile industries for their Protestant employers. And in May and June 1790, those religious tensions erupt in violence in the streets of Montauban and Nimes. Religious freedom and equality for some is resented by many others. Another source of tension has to do with the decision of the National Assembly to make that critical distinction between active and passive citizens. And political activists, such as this man, Georges Danton, Who's to be a key figure in the revolution, argues passionately that the people who took the Bastille in 1789, who made the revolution of 1789, should not be precluded from exercising their political choice on the basis of their wealth. The issue of who was an active citizen, who was a passive citizen, the issue of universal manhood suffrage. Is an issue that will not go away. And Danton is one of the people funds the Cordeliers club still standing in Paris as part of the National Institute of Medicine. Danton was one of those people who funds the Cordeliers club in an old Cordeliers confront, one of the One of the church properties that is sold off in 1790. And that becomes a place where radical activists can push harder for the rights of passive citizens to be respected. It's at this time in 1790, moving into 1791 that the working people of Paris, who, remember, had been called menu peuple or the common people. People such as these, second hand clothes sellers, people selling small goods in the streets of Paris, small shopkeepers and their employers, and so on. The common people of Paris demanding their full political rights. Start to be given a rather different title. This time a social and political title of sans-culottes. That these are people who don't wear the fancy knee breeches and stockings of the well-to-do middle classes in our aristocracy. They simply wear trousers they go without culottes. It's a term of condensation from the well-to-do. Common people increasingly take it as a term of pride, as a badge of pride. That yes we're sans-culottes as you can see in this in contemporary drawing of a radical democratic political club. The man in the front here wearing his ordinary trousers as a sans-culotte. The final issue that is bubbling away in the background of issues that the revolution has not resolved to the disappointment of many, is that of slavery. Remember the declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen had said that all poor people are born free and equal. Does that also apply to the half a million slaves in the French Caribbean colonies? In 1791 there is a powerful, divisive debate in the National Assembly, which some people, such as and others, argue that the revolution cannot be said to be logical. To be in tune with what was desired in 1789, if there is hesitation about slavery. That it is simply incompatible with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Others argue all sorts of rationales, for the retention of slavery. That it would be terrible for the French economy to simply have slavery in those rich plantation economies abolished. Other people say yes, slavery is wrong, but it will take us a long time to resolve all the questions, etc. etc. Finally in May 1791 it's decided that slaves who are free, and who are born of other slaves who are free, in other words, with two generations of freedom, that they will be recognized as citizens. And this contemporary representation shows the measure of equality being placed across the head of a white naval officer. And a free black in the colonies by the personification of equality and liberty guiding her hand as the demons of superstition are banished in the background. For those groups, however, for the mass of slaves. For the poor, for the peasants. The revolution is not yet over. There are unresolved questions. For many other people, on the other hand, the revolution has already gone too far. It's already seen to be too radical in the changes that it's introduced. And in the coming lectures I'm going to summarize the ways in which those tensions are played out. Across the next 18 months.
