In my previous lecture, I explained how one of the great turning points of the French Revolution was division over reform to the church. A second one has to do with the place and the powers of the king. Like the clergy, Louis the XVI himself is enormously popular at the outset of the French Revolution. He's described publicly as the restorer of liberty to the French people. And this very popular engraving shows what is a common sight across France in 1789 and 1790 of traveling story tellers telling tales about how good King Louis has restored freedom to the French people. And there's little doubt that Louis the XVI in all sorts of ways is genuinely committed to the project of improving the lot of the mass of the people. On the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille on the 14th of July 1790 at that great celebration on the Champ de Mars in Paris, Louis takes this oath: I king of the French swear to use the power given to me by the constitutional law of the state, to maintain the constitution as decided by the National Assembly and accepted by myself, and to enforce the laws. As the National Assembly goes about drawing up its first constitution, Louis has resolved in July 1790 that he will uphold it. But he's concerned. He's lost an enormous panoply of power, and he's particularly concerned as a devout Catholic at what's happened to the church. Louis himself had accepted the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, had signed it into law, but is racked by guilt ever afterwards. At Easter time in 1791, in April 1791, he tries to leave Paris to have Easter mass said by a non-juring clergyman, someone who hasn't accepted the church reforms and is forcibly prevented from leaving Paris when the gates of the city are closed. He and his family decide that drastic action has to be taken if the course of the revolution is to be reversed if it's to be made of a much more moderate nature that he could accept. And around midnight on the night of the 20th and 21st of June 1791 after elaborate preparations, Louis the XIV, Marie-Antoinette, his queen, and their family, and some of their closest retinue flee Paris. Parisians wake the next morning, the morning of the 21st, to the news that the King is no longer in the capital. In fact, he's decided to take drastic action in an attempt to shock French people into recognizing that somehow the revolution has gone too far, because it's no longer being conducted in accordance with the wishes of the king. He's headed for the Eastern frontier, he is headed for the safety of the garrison commanded by Marquis de Bouille, who is in charge of the huge garrisons in the Eastern cities of Metz and Nancy and who's to shepherd him across the frontier into the safety of Luxembourg. He doesn't get that far because as he's passing through one of the small towns in Eastern France, he's close to the frontier, he's recognized, and finally arrested. In the small village of Varennes. The actual building in which he's arrested is no longer standing, it was destroyed by a bomb during World War II, but it's next to this clock tower here, in the heart of the village, where people from the neighboring town the postmaster, the head of the National Guard, burst into the place where Louis the XIV is enjoying a huge meal- it's one of the reasons why he's caught- he keeps stopping for such extravaganzas- and arrest him. It's an extraordinary moment in the history of the French Revolution. Some people at the time argued that one of the reasons why he's arrested is that his profile is, in fact, recognized from the revolutionary currency, the Assignat, that that's a reason why the postmaster can recognize him as he passes through that small town. We don't know the veracity of that claim. Why did he leave? Why did a man who had taken an oath, of loyalty to the constitution, effectively to the revolution, why did he decide in June 1791 to leave? Well, we know a good deal, because he leaves behind him a declaration, signed on the 20th of June to ‘Frenchmen, and especially you Parisians, you inhabitants of a city which the ancestors of His Majesty were pleased to call the good city of Paris, distrust the suggestions and lies of your false friends - the National Assembly - Return to your King; he will always be your father, your best friend. What pleasure will he not take in forgetting all his personal injuries, and beholding himself again in your midst, when a constitution, freely accepted by him, shall cause our holy religion to be respected…’ His concern about the way that church reform had ripped the church apart. But remember he says ‘distrust the suggestions and lies of your false friends’. and what he has in mind particularly is this revolutionary grouping call the Society of Friends of the Constitution, that's to say meetings, a political club of active citizens, overwhelmingly middle class professional people. In Paris they meet in the Jacobin Club, formerly part of the Jacobin monastery which has been sold off as church property in 1790. But across the country there are these patriotic, pro-revolutionary meetings of societies of friends of the constitution, and Louis the XVI sees them as effectively exercising power that they had no right to. Remember, he keeps thinking to himself, these are people who I called together in 1789 to give me advice, and now they're presuming to tell me how to run the kingdom. He's hoping to shock the people of France into realizing that their false friends have misled them. What in fact happens once he's caught is dismay. And finally that dismay, disappointment, bewilderment turns to fury. News of his capture sweeps across the countryside. Even quicker, it seems, than the news of the storming of the Bastille back in 1789. As Louis and the royal family return to the capital, people note that ordinary people, peasants along the way, refuse to take off their hats as a mark of lack of respect, even of contempt for this king, who they feel has abandoned them. Graphic representations, crude representations like this become very common. Here of a peasant holding a pig with Louis XVI's face, and he popularly becomes known as The Pig King, and the caption saying, I impoverished myself, I spent all of my savings fattening up this pig for market and now I just don't know what to do with him. What is to be done with the king? He's temporarily placed under suspension, from his royal functions as the Assembly decides what to do. A few weeks later when the second anniversary of the storming of the Bastille is celebrated on the 14th of July 1791, this time the music of Gossec and of the poet Marie Joseph Chenier is rather more menacing and militant in tone than that pro Catholic Te Deum of 1790: God of the people and of kings, of cities of the countryside, of Luther, of Calvin, the children of Israel - celebrating religious equality. Remember the times when the sinister tyrants crushed underfoot the rights of the French. The time not so long ago, when wicked ministers deceived peoples and kings. Princes, nobles, bishops swam in opulence. The people shuddered under their wealth. Their palaces were cemented with the blood of the oppressed, the tears of misery. The king is still respected, because the wicked ministers deceived him as much as the people. But even so, there is an element of menace about this new song of the 14th of July. What is to be done with the king? One of the people who argues most powerfully inside the National Assembly that the king should be maintained on his throne is this man Antoine Barnave. Interestingly, he's one of the key spokesmen for the colonial lobby, he's one of the people who most adamantly opposed any measure of emancipation for the slaves- in his mind it would simply be a disaster, for the French economy. He gets up on the National Assembly and says this, he knows that there is a petition campaign calling on Louis the 16th to be forced to abdicate the throne. Barnave says this to the National Assembly on the 15th of July, the day after the second anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille: ‘What I fear most, he says, is our vigour, our unrest; I fear the indefinite prolongation of our revolutionary fever. Any change today is fatal, every prolongation of the Revolution disastrous. I am posing the question here, for it is a question of the national interest. Are we going to end the Revolution, or are we going to start it all over again? Many people applaud. If the revolution takes one more step it can only be a dangerous one: if it is in line with liberty its first act could be the destruction of royalty, if it is in line with a equality it's first line of attack could be on property. It's time to bring the revolution to an end. It must stop at the point where the Nation is free and all men are equal. Everyone must be made aware that it is in the common interest that the revolution be brought to a halt. Stop the revolution now at a point where people are equal before the law, don't go any further because an attack on monarchy will end up in a further attack on property, perhaps even an attack on the property that slaves represent in the Colonies. Two days later sans-culottes, working people in Paris and Jacobin sympathizers decide however to proceed with the petition signing on the Champ-de-mars, the same altar of the homeland where the gains of the revolution had twice been celebrated. The National Guard is sent in to disperse that unarmed demonstration. The commander of the National Guard, Lafayette, twice issues the command of martial law that the crowd to disperse, and when it refuses to, he orders the National Guard to open fire. We don't know the precise figures of those who are killed or injured, but many hundreds of the unarmed demonstrators either die or are wounded that day in July 1791. Blood has been shed between the very people who together made the revolution of 1789.
