Sign up to access the complete lesson and track your progress!
Unlock This CourseBy early August 1789 the National Assembly had a problem. Since 9 July it had called itself the Constituent Assembly, because its job was to write a constitution. But the countryside was in revolt, and the deputies could not write laws for a country they did not control. Sending troops against the peasants would mean relying on the king's army. So they chose to give the peasants what they wanted.
On the evening of 4 August a noble deputy, the Vicomte de Noailles, proposed ending feudal dues and tax privileges. The Duc d'Aiguillon, one of the richest landowners in France, backed him. Then, in a wave of excitement that lasted far into the night, nobles, clergy and towns stood up one after another to give up their privileges.
Key terms:
Over the next week the promises of that night were written into law. The August Decrees opened with a bold claim: the Assembly 'abolishes the feudal system entirely'. The detail was more careful.
Serfdom, where it still existed. The lords' hunting rights and their own law courts. Tax privileges, so everyone would pay the same taxes. The special privileges of provinces and towns. The buying and selling of government jobs. From now on, any citizen could hold any post in the Church, the army or the government.
Most feudal dues counted as the lord's property. Peasants were told to keep paying them until they could redeem them, and few could afford to. The tithe paid to the Church was abolished, but it too had to be paid until something was put in its place. Many peasants felt cheated and simply refused to pay.
Why the decrees mattered: they swept away the society of privilege. France was no longer divided into three Estates with different rights and different taxes. All the French were now citizens under the same law, and careers were open to talent, not birth. The decrees also calmed much of the countryside, which let the Assembly get on with its work.
Before writing the constitution, the deputies set out the principles it would rest on. Lafayette was one of those who drafted the Declaration, and it drew on the ideas of the Enlightenment. It had 17 articles. The key points were:
Why it mattered: the Declaration was the death notice of the ancien régime. An absolute monarch ruling by divine right had no place in it, because power now came from the nation. It also ruled out lettres de cachet. But it had limits. It said nothing about the rights of women, it did not end slavery in France's colonies, and it did not say who would get the vote. Its strong defence of property suited the bourgeois deputies who wrote it.
Louis XVI refused to approve either the August Decrees or the Declaration. Without his signature they were not law. Three things then turned this stand-off into a crisis.
The harvest of 1789 was good, but bread was still scarce and expensive in Paris in the autumn.
Parisians feared that Louis was blocking the Revolution and waiting for a chance to undo it.
Louis called the Flanders Regiment to Versailles. On 1 October its officers were given a banquet. Paris newspapers reported that they had trampled on the tricolour badge.
On 5 October several thousand women, many of them market women, set off from Paris to Versailles, about 20 kilometres away, to demand bread. Lafayette followed with about 20,000 National Guards. That evening the women pushed into the Assembly and a group of them met the king. Louis promised grain for Paris. Under pressure, he also approved the August Decrees and the Declaration.
Early on 6 October part of the crowd broke into the palace. Two of the royal bodyguards were killed, and Marie Antoinette only just escaped to the king's rooms. The National Guard restored order, but the crowd in the courtyard shouted 'To Paris!' Louis gave in. That afternoon the royal family travelled to Paris, surrounded by the crowd, who called them 'the baker, the baker's wife and the baker's boy'. They moved into the Tuileries Palace. The Assembly followed them to Paris later that month.
Extract A (a practice extract written for this lesson, in the style of a modern history textbook)
On the night of 4 August the deputies made a great show of generosity, but they were frightened men trying to save their own estates from the flames. By the time the decrees were written down a week later, the grand promises had shrunk. The most valuable dues were merely declared open to purchase, at a price few peasants could ever hope to pay. The Assembly boasted that it had destroyed feudalism. In truth, it had sent the peasants a bill.
What impression does the author give about the August Decrees? You must use Extract A to explain your answer. [6 marks]
The author gives the impression that the August Decrees were a disappointment that gave the peasants far less than they seemed to offer. The language makes the deputies sound selfish and insincere: they made 'a great show of generosity' but were 'frightened men' saving 'their own estates'. The words 'shrunk' and 'merely' suggest the peasants were let down, and the final line, that the Assembly 'had sent the peasants a bill', makes the decrees sound like a trick. The author has chosen to stress the dues that had to be bought out and the price of doing so. The extract leaves out the things that were ended at once, such as serfdom, hunting rights and tax privileges, which makes the decrees seem to have achieved almost nothing.
What lifts it to the top level: it names one clear impression, proves it with short quotations of the author's loaded words, and explains what the author chose to stress and to leave out.
Do not retell what the August Decrees did. This question is about how the author writes. Pick out loaded words such as 'merely' and 'boasted', say what each one suggests, then add one sentence on what the extract leaves out.