The Strategy of Protest and Revolution 2:
The French Revolution
Hi, and welcome to Strategy Stuff.
This is a video series on “The Strategy
of Protest and Revolution”, where we’ll
look at how successful revolutionary, protest
and other social movements have strategized
in order to achieve their political goals.
To do that, we’ll be focusing on the following
questions:
- First: How can activists turn public discontent
into a political movement?
- Second: What do successful movements do
to achieve their political goals?
- And third, how have successful strategies
changed with time?
Over this series, we’ll answer these questions
by looking at various historical movements,
starting with the French Revolution of 1789.
Introduction
The French Revolution of 1789, which overthrew
the absolute monarchy of King Louis XVI, is
seen as the prime example of a “Spontaneous
Uprising” grand strategy.
Under this narrative, decades of mismanagement
by the absolutist establishment, initially
meaning the King and his court at Versailles,
triggered an explosive anti-absolutist uprising
amongst the King’s subjects: first from
the aristocracy, then from the bourgeoisie
and finally the urban workers.
This narrative isn’t wrong, but it overlooks
the extent to which anti-absolutist groups
organized and prepared for 1789.
They organized into a broad coalition that,
while very loose, very informal and very conflicted,
nevertheless managed to overcome the establishment’s
political and physical power.
Focusing on the experience of Paris, we want
to focus on three questions:
- One.
How did activists convince the aristocracy,
bourgeoisie and workers to join the movement?
- Two.
How did the movement stay together long enough
to overcome the establishment?
- and Three.
How did the movement actually overcome establishment
power?
Establishment and Movement
Because social movements can’t usually match
an establishment at full strength, their success
depends on political opportunities.
The best opportunities occur within an extended
window of opportunity, where an already-declining
establishment receives a further blow to its
power.
This was what the Versailles establishment
was facing on the eve of Revolution.
Throughout the 18th Century, the French state
had failed to raise enough tax to cover its
expenses, preferring to take on debt instead.
By 1787, France was struggling to pay the
interest on its debt – if it was to avoid
a humiliating default, Versailles had to reform
the tax system, and especially get rid of
the aristocracy’s – meaning the clergy
and nobility’s – tax privileges.
But this action broke the implicit agreement
that tied the aristocracy to Versailles, and
– not for the first time – the establishment
split apart, with aristocrats deploying their
power not for the King, but against him.
In this way, reform periods present a particularly
powerful opportunity for social movements.
*
But even then, the obstacles to success were
high.
Within Paris, Versailles had a formidable
internal security force: to police a city
of 600 thousand, it had a Paris Guard of 1.5
thousand and the 6 thousand strong regiment
of the Gardes Francaises, which would give
a force-to-civilian ratio higher than modern
cities.
Of course, these units were hardly professional
police, but they were well-experienced in
managing public anger.
While political assemblies were officially
banned, the police recognized the value in
letting people gather in quote-unquote “celebrations”
to blow off steam.
This was the case even for riots, where a
few minor villains – usually price-gouging
bakers – were sacrificed to mobs, preserving
the larger system and reminding the well-off
of the value of order.
The police would even offer to escort protests
to Versailles, encouraging the population
to see the King, rather than fellow citizens,
as their only savior.
Thanks to their management, Paris before the
1780s had not seen a movement last longer
than 3 months.
The police were helped by the segmented nature
of French society.
We can simplify things into three social classes:
first, there was the aristocracy of the clergy
and nobility.
Their goal was to defend their existing privileges,
and to achieve that, they would deploy the
political power they held to disrupt Versailles
and force it to give in.
At the other end were the workers, made up
of the skilled and unskilled laborers of Paris.
They wanted to get rid of aristocratic privilege,
but at the same time they also wanted to protect
their own privileges, most often in the form
of guilds and wage levels.
Disruption was also their standard method,
but this time in the form of physical violence,
like riots.
In the middle were the bourgeoisie or middle-class,
made up of non-aristocratic professionals
and merchants.
They wanted to eliminate both the aristocratic
and working-class privileges that limited
their economic and social power.
Unlike the other two classes, they preferred
to coopt rather than disrupt the establishment,
exploiting the fact that French society valued
their expertise and money to influence others
to grant their demands.
From this overview, we can see that these
classes were not natural partners – on the
contrary, each class had every reason to see
the King as their defender against the threat
posed by the others.
So how could a movement even get going like
this?
A Good Issue: Mismanagement and Citizenhood
A Spontaneous Uprising is a high-issue, low
organization movement, made up of independent
cells that loosely work together because they
share similar demands.
Until the very end, the French anti-absolutist
movement of 1789, had no central command.
Nobody had the authority to order others to
do something; instead, participants were motivated
by the issues to do whatever they thought
would be useful.
So the key thing for the movement was to find
an issue that would motivate as many people
as possible to join the movement and act in
its name.
Usually, this is the point where we start
talking about the “Rights of Man”.
But a good issue requires more than just abstract
philosophy: it needs to identify a pressing
societal problem, and offer a solution to
said problem that works for the public.
In true low-organization form, the movement’s
issue slowly formed as individual activists
published, debated, reacted to events, and
received feedback, and gradually, everybody
came to some conclusions as to what would
best motivate the public.
The problem was relatively simple – it was
the self-evident mismanagement of France by
the absolutist establishment.
Repeated debt crises, economic recessions,
defeat in war and royal scandals made it easy
for the public to accept that the establishment
was not running the country well.
There was no need to narrow down the mismanagement
beyond this – the goal, after all, was to
appeal to as many groups as possible, even
if each group had a different interpretation
on what the mismanagement was.
For nobles, Versailles was reforming away
their privilege; for officers, France’s
defeats were because Versailles protected
noble privilege.
Versailles sided with British manufacturers
against the French bourgeoisie; Versailles
was siding with the French factory owners
against the workers.
By holding a broad definition of ‘mismanagement’,
the movement could bridge the gap between
France’s bickering classes, so long as they
didn’t examine each other’s positions
too closely.
So how to fix ‘mismanagement’?
The solution came in the idea of ‘citizenhood’,
which was another broad concept that could
appeal to everybody.
The idea, that every subject of France should
have certain rights and a say in how the country
was run, could justify almost every political
outcome.
It was of course used to justify bourgeois
constitutionalism and working-class radicalism,
but even conservative nobles could get behind
it, because they already saw themselves as
defenders of traditional rights against the
King.
Army officers imagined that a ‘citizens’
army’ would achieve success like the Roman
legions; Church reformists argued that citizenhood
would bring the church closer to the people.
Again, so long as they didn’t look too closely
at each other, everybody could see ‘citizenhood’
as a solution to their problems.
Furthermore, implementing ‘citizenhood’
was not seen as a radical change.
Nothing in it demanded the removal of the
King; instead, Versailles was only expected
to accept or tweak existing political institutions,
and many even saw the King as the one who
would set this process in motion, given his
role in freeing the United States.
The solution was therefore well-positioned
to, again, appeal to large segments of society.
So, we’ve seen how the issue of ‘mismanagement’
and ‘citizenhood’ used broad definitions
to unite France’s competing social classes
in a common struggle against absolutism.
But the downside of designing an issue this
way is that whatever unity that results is
just an illusion, because participants are
still expecting different results.
As the anti-absolutist movement developed,
its participants would increasingly clash
over what ‘citizenhood’ meant specifically,
leading ultimately into Revolutionary Terror.
July 87 – Apr 88: Aristocrats and Bourgeoisie
Let’s go back to Paris in 1787, where the
absolutist establishment under King Louis
XVI was trying to revoke the tax privileges
of the church and the nobility.
These aristocrats responded by using the institutions
they controlled to disrupt Versailles’ plans.
Their key tool here was the Paris parlement,
an aristocrat-dominated law court, whose approval
was needed for tax legislation.
Unsurprisingly, the parlement refused to approve.
Aristocratic disruption soon spread across
the political system.
In May, Versailles tried to overawe the parlement
by convening a handpicked Assembly of Notables
to support the King.
Instead, the aristocrats in the Assembly not
only forced out the Finance Minister, they
also declared that the King had to convene
the Estates-General, for now another institution
the aristocrats controlled, to discuss reform.
In these ways, the anti-absolutist movement,
almost exclusively driven by ex-establishment
aristocrats, demonstrated a power to disrupt
Versailles politically.
But Versailles was not ready to compromise.
It deployed more of its political power to
suppress the movement: in July, the King banished
parlement from Paris and tried to impose the
tax reforms by edict.
In response, aristocrats looked to increase
their power by bringing in more participants.
The first – and more important – group
they approached were their counterparts in
the provinces.
Being from similar social circles and having
the same interest in defending privilege,
the country aristocracy easily joined the
movement.
The provincial parlements refused to approve
the tax changes, and the clergy voted to pay
only 25% of their dues to the King.
By increasing the scale of the disruption,
the movement temporarily outmatched Versailles
and the banishment of the Paris parlement
was lifted in August.
At the same time, the movement was also reaching
out to another group.
On their own initiative, the professional
bourgeoisie who staffed the Paris parlement,
and who became unemployed during the banishment,
implemented their own outreach towards fellow
Parisians, particularly of their social class,
urging them to support parlement against Versailles.
We’ve gone through how the movement’s
issue was structured to appeal to both aristocrats
and bourgeoisie.
But to broadcast their message to the public,
parlement activists resorted to the simplest
action of: doing something to get attention.
They burnt effigies of the King’s ministers,
and marched around central Paris yelling slogans.
The point was to advertise their existence
and to draw a crowd – but not to disrupt
the establishment.
In fact, at this point activists cooperated
with police to guarantee a safe environment
to quote-unquote “amuse ourselves”.
Despite this, serious work was being done.
Peaceful mass gatherings served three purposes:
firstly, they served to draw in both the friendly
and the curious.
Secondly, they demonstrated that public opinion
favored the parlement.
Lastly, they were also centers of agitation
and political education, where activists turned
uncommitted people into motivated supporters.
These mass gatherings soon moved into bourgeois
and aristocratic districts to achieve greater
effect.
The bourgeoisie were already unhappy with
absolutism, and these gatherings eventually
agitated many to take action against Versailles,
as we will see.
For now, this surface-level unity between
aristocrat and bourgeois was good enough to
keep the movement alive through the banishment
of the parlement, as well as another round
of attempted suppression over the winter.
The movement was readying itself to navigate
the turbulent years ahead.
May – Aug 88: The Workers Join
Up until the spring of 1788, the anti-absolutist
movement was mainly comprised of aristocrats
and bourgeoisie.
The aristocratic parlement continued to disrupt
Versailles’ tax reform attempts, supported
by the bourgeoisie’s mass gatherings that,
in the absence of any pro-establishment gathering,
represented the only public opinion on the
issue.
With the debt becoming increasingly unsustainable,
the movement must have thought that this was
the best time to escalate the disruption and
force King Louis to compromise.
The parlement began to not just obstruct,
but actually intrude on the King’s powers.
In May 1788, it declared that it, not the
King, was the defender of the so-called ‘fundamental
rights of the Nation’, and followed it up
by rejecting the King’s right to veto or
punish it.
The movement was inflicting ever-greater costs
on the establishment; but to King Louis, the
costs of compromising on absolutism were still
much higher.
This time, Versailles drew not just on its
political power, but also on its physical
power.
In a set of May Edicts, the King formally
stripped the parlement of its powers, and
backed it up by sending in the police and
the army to break up mass gatherings.
Undoubtedly, he hoped that such a display
of power, which the movement surely could
not match, would be enough to suppress the
movement.
Versailles didn’t count on the workers – the
sans-culottes – joining the anti-absolutist
movement.
Throughout France, the bourgeoisie and working
class began to riot, attacking officials and
holding political assemblies.
Even when troops were ordered to disperse
rioters, working-class soldiers often deserted
or mutinied instead.
Everywhere, workers parroted the message of
the movement: “Down with the King’s Ministers!”,
“Long Live the Parlement!”, and “Soldiers,
Defend the Citizens!”.
So why did workers join the movement now?
The establishment accused them of being mobs
for hire, paid by aristocrats to cause trouble.
More realistically, we can point to the bad
harvests of 1787 and 88, and the state failing
to pay soldiers’ wages.
But that doesn’t explain why workers would
join a movement that, by and large, was made
up of people who didn’t share their goals.
It all goes back to the movement’s continuing
outreach, which was now filtering down to
all of Parisian society.
But a different approach was required to recruit
the workers.
The revolutionary press that would agitate
the sans-culottes in later years was still
miniscule in 1788, and in any case the average
worker was probably too busy surviving to
be motivated by high politics.
Instead, workers participated through their
social circle: if their friends, employers,
or local leaders joined, they would join too.
So, mobilizing the workers meant tapping into
the social connections within the faubourg
industrial suburbs of Paris.
Unfortunately for the establishment, they
had unwittingly given the movement a major
opportunity here.
In 1782, tax collectors had built a ring of
customs posts to tax goods entering the city,
and among those who most resented the taxes
were the wine merchants who delivered and
served cheap wine in the taverns of the faubourgs.
This put them in the perfect position to both
be influenced by the bourgeois part of the
movement, and to direct the workers and their
social circles in the movement’s direction.
Adopting the movement’s issues as their
own, the workers sought to achieve them in
their typical fashion – violence.
Suddenly, the movement gained a physical power
that the King’s scattered forces had not
planned for.
Rocked by urban riots and going bankrupt,
Versailles by August was forced to not only
restore the Paris parlement, but also to convene
the Estates-General by May 1789, and place
the movement’s favored candidate, the bourgeois
financier Jacques Necker, as Finance Minister.
From the aristocratic viewpoint, Versailles
had completely capitulated to their demands;
all that remained was for them to exercise
their control over the Estates-General, and
finally put an end to the absolutist threat
to their privileges… but of course, that
wasn’t the end of it.
Aug 88 – Apr 89: Ideological Clashes
At this point, we should remember that each
social class of aristocracy, bourgeoisie and
workers joined the anti-absolutist movement
for contradictory reasons: the aristocracy
wanted to defend privilege, the bourgeoisie
wanted to end it, and the workers took both
pro- and anti-privilege stances for their
goal of social equality.
So far, the movement had papered over their
differences by using broad definitions for
its issue of ‘mismanagement’ and ‘citizenhood’.
But now, the aristocrats had achieved victory
according to their definition of the issue.
Almost immediately, the movement broke apart.
True to their idea of aristocratic representation,
the Paris parlement in September 1788 announced
the famous three tiers of the Estates-General:
the First Estate of the Clergy, the Second
Estate of the Nobility, and the Third Estate,
with every resolution requiring the separate
approval of all three Estates.
This essentially gave the aristocracy two
vetoes over any proposal.
To the bourgeoisie and workers, this arrangement
merely substituted absolutist privilege with
aristocratic privilege.
So they used their larger numbers to impose
a new interpretation of the issue upon the
movement, one that rejected their former partners.
Now characterizing the aristocracy as in with
the absolutist establishment, they demanded
changes to the voting structure of the Estates-General
that would allow the Third Estate to outvote
the other two.
This was not what most aristocrats wanted,
and all but the most liberal deserted the
movement.
The aristocrats’ loss of leadership is a
demonstration of what could happen if a movement
does not enforce ideological discipline on
newcomers.
The bourgeoisie overwhelmed the aristocrats;
could the workers eventually overwhelm the
bourgeoisie?
The movement needed the physical power of
the workers to face down Versailles, yet worker
demands clearly conflicted with bourgeois
interests.
This uncomfortable relationship was fully
tested in the Reveillon Riots of April 1789.
Reveillon was a bourgeois factory owner who
made his wealth selling to aristocrats.
This made him a success story to the bourgeoisie,
but a potential collaborator and profiteer
to the workers.
So, when Reveillon made some misinterpreted
comments about reducing wages, workers decided
to teach him a lesson, and destroyed Reveillon’s
house, factory and neighborhood in a four-day
riot.
As if to indicate that this was what they
expected out of the broader anti-absolutist
movement, they called out “Long Live the
Third Estate!” even while looting from another
member of the Third Estate.
Bourgeois leaders had to walk a fine line
between keeping their movement viable and
maintaining their control over it.
The easiest solution was to have Versailles
fulfill their demands, and so, throughout
the riots, they stressed their loyalty to
the King, said that they were defending Paris
from anarchy, and tacitly cooperated with
police in suppressing the riot.
At the same time, bourgeois leaders also inserted
themselves as leaders of the working class.
Bourgeois pamphlets such as Sieyes’ famous
What is the Third Estate?
portrayed workers and bourgeoisie as part
of a common front, even though only 10% of
Parisian workers earned enough to vote for
representatives to the Third Estate.
Still, those inevitably-bourgeois representatives
also acted as voices for the workers and peasants,
drafting the lists of grievances that were
delivered to the Estates-General and leading
protests against other bourgeoisie – though
during the Reveillon Riots, they actually
led workers away from his factory.
These measures worked to some extent: the
bourgeoisie and their liberal aristocrat allies
would lead throughout the 1789 Revolution
and for a while afterwards.
But they were also helped by the lack of a
working-class institution that could organize
the workers.
This would not be the case after 1789 and
partly explains why the Revolution turned
into the Terror.
May – Jul 1789: Revolution
By spring 1789, the ideological struggle within
the anti-absolutist movement had, for now,
been resolved in favor of the bourgeoisie
and its liberal allies, just in time for the
convening of the Estates-General of 1789 to
discuss France’s fiscal situation.
Versailles had given in to this in the face
of the massive disruption inflicted by the
aristocrat-led movement.
While it recognized that the two aristocratic
vetoes within the Estates-General would kill
off any reform of aristocratic privilege,
this concession would at least allow normal
business – which included tackling the deficit
– to resume.
There was still the small matter of the anti-absolutist
movement taking over the Third Estate, but
now that the establishment had been reunified,
it could surely outmatch anything the bourgeoisie
or the working class could do.
As we all know, the establishment miscalculated
– again.
But this time, they didn’t get the level
of disruption wrong.
Granted, they weren’t expecting the Third
Estate to insist on voting reform within the
Estates-General, and when that was rejected,
to declare itself the National Assembly and
demand a constitution for France in the famous
Tennis Court Oath of June 20th.
But the Assembly still needed the rest of
the French political system to accept these
changes, and surely, the vetoes of the aristocracy
and the forces of the King would stop that
from ever happening.
The fact that the establishment was unable
to stop such a happening represents the crowning
achievement of the bourgeois movement’s
outreach.
Even before the birth of the National Assembly,
the non-aristocratic clergy had already decided
to join the Third Estate, and they brought
the rest of the First Estate with them.
Soon, nobles also began defecting to the Assembly,
and within a week of the Oath, King Louis
had no choice but to order the rest of the
Second Estate to join.
Under the very nose of Versailles, the movement
had coopted enough of the establishment to
hand over its political powers.
The Assembly cleverly deployed them to declare
itself the only tax authority in the country,
placing Versailles at its financial mercy.
In any future political disruption contest,
the establishment would surely lose.
But King Louis still could not accept limits
on his absolutism, and once again, he turned
back to the physical forces he controlled.
Versailles now ordered armies to concentrate
around Paris, threatening to re-impose absolutism
at the tip of a bayonet.
What was once largely a political contest
was rapidly turning into a physical one, and
to survive it, the movement needed to assemble
a force that could match that of an actual
state.
This was not something that a low-organization
movement of loosely-coordinated groups was
good at.
There were some attempts at independently
setting up local forces.
The workers’ riots of the previous months
had already forced Parisians to see to their
own defense, throwing up barricades that would
then be policed by neighborhood militia.
Within these barricades, neighborhood committees
began taking over the business of government:
overseeing residents, organizing supplies,
exchanging news with other committees.
Nevertheless, movement leaders recognized
that these mini-states were little more than
disorganized rabble without a central coordinating
organization.
Now, most low-organization movements trying
to set up centralized commands fall at this
last hurdle, both because of the high material
and non-material cost to set up these institutions,
and because they present a juicy target for
establishment forces.
But here, the French anti-absolutist movement
had the extreme luck of being supported by
the richest man in France – the Duke of
Orleans, King Louis’ cousin and a liberal
aristocrat.
He offered the movement not just unlimited
funds, but also his Palais Royal in Paris’
city center, which was off-limits to police.
Money and safety were no longer a problem.
While movement leaders negotiated their way
towards a central command that satisfied all
groups, they were already using the Palais
Royal to coordinate action at a much higher
level.
A key objective was securing the defection
of the policing forces within Paris: the Paris
Guard and the regiment of the Gardes Francaises.
Despite their suppression of the Reveillon
Riots, both were being swayed by the general
anti-establishment mood within Paris.
So the movement launched a coordinated and
sustained campaign to encourage their defection:
propaganda, bribes, appeals from the crowd,
even sending mobs to break into jails to free
defectors.
The result was a 1% defection rate to the
movement even before the dramatic days of
the Bastille, not just from the Gardes but
also from units surrounding Paris and beyond.
The movement also cooperated with the National
Assembly in Versailles, hoping for the least-risky
way of winning, which was a compromise with
King Louis.
As the King’s military intent became more
obvious in late June, the Palais even discouraged
protests to support the argument that the
National Assembly would restore order to France.
Unfortunately for himself, King Louis continued
to believe in absolutism at all costs, and
on July 11, shut down all possibility of compromise
by dismissing what the bourgeois movement
saw as their representative at Versailles,
the Finance Minister Jacques Necker.
Versailles seemed intent on re-imposing order
through force.
Caught up in fear and anger, the workers and
their radical allies gave the call to arms,
and began rioting all over Paris.
They shut down economic activity in the city,
pillaged civilian and religious buildings
in search of food and guns, and burnt down
the hated customs barrier ringing Paris, though
*strangely enough*, the ones owned by the
Duke of Orleans were spared.
The mob even tried to fight army cavalry,
which they quickly ran away from.
This outburst unnerved the army enough that
they retreated beyond the boundaries of Paris,
but this sort of rioting was hardly going
to stand up to a full assault.
Even worse from the movement leaders’ perspective,
the workers were organizing and arming themselves
in a way that threatened bourgeois control.
This finally pushed them into setting up their
central command: on July 13, a Municipal Committee,
later the Paris Commune, was set up to coordinate
the neighborhood committees.
Each neighborhood would also send men for
a Bourgeois Militia, later the National Guard.
These institutions would be led by bourgeoisie.
The movement could finally be directed from
a center, and at this point, things began
to run their course.
The entire regiment of the Gardes Francaises,
having been ordered to leave Paris, now defected
to Bourgeois Militia, staffing key positions
and greatly enhancing the movement’s physical
power.
To find arms for this new army, the Militia
broke into the Hotel des Invalides on the
night of July 13 and, of course, the famous
Bastille on July 14.
Contrary to popular image, the mob that took
the Bastille was not made up of the urban
poor, but instead of merchants, ex-Gardes,
shopkeepers and skilled laborers – exactly
as the bourgeois leaders wanted.
In any case, it was not the taking of some
obsolete fortress that secured the anti-absolutist
movement’s triumph; instead, it was its
transformation from a loosely-coordinated
movement to an organized mini-state that did
it.
At its height, about a third of Paris’ 600
thousand individuals were armed, and while
most of these were unorganized individuals,
the prospect of facing an organized National
Guard on top of that overwhelmed Versailles.
The army was dismissed, the King gave up much
of his power to the National Assembly, and
royal court came under the protection of the
movement.
The bourgeois movement’s leaders – men
such as Orleans, Lafayette, and Mirabeau – were
now also leaders of France… at least, until
the working class began taking over the institutions
they once controlled.
Conclusion
We started with the idea that the French Revolution
of 1789 was a classic “Spontaneous Uprising”.
For most of its duration, it was indeed what
a Spontaneous Uprising should look like: various
loosely-coordinated groups, putting their
own spin on the core issue of absolutist mismanagement
and citizenhood, in order to collectively
forge a large and diverse coalition that bridged
France’s class divides.
It also exhibited the defects of such a high-issue,
low-organization grand strategy, as the aristocrats,
bourgeoisie and workers within the movement
eventually realized that they didn’t actually
share the same goals.
The resulting ideological conflicts saw the
bourgeoisie oust the aristocrats and repress
the workers, laying the groundwork for trouble
in the years ahead.
As the contest between movement and establishment
ultimately came down to physical force, the
movement’s victory came because it moved
away from the Spontaneous Uprising template,
acquiring a centralized command that could
organize Paris’ resources in a way that
proved too much for Versailles to handle.
That it achieved this might simply be a matter
of sheer luck, in having the support of France’s
foremost noble.
Finally, we might also think about what the
establishment could have done to defeat the
movement.
Once it started, King Louis has often been
criticized for failing to appreciate the danger
of the movement, but in this analysis, his
moderation might have been the greater error.
By initially escalating his responses to only
be a little more severe than what the movement
had been capable of, King Louis set a low
bar for the movement at each stage, incentivizing
the movement to improve its capabilities each
time.
We might contrast King Louis XVI’s failure
in 1789 with the suppression of the parlements
under his grandfather, King Louis XV, in 1770.
Then, Versailles immediately deployed vast
political, physical and administrative powers
to humiliate, exile and ultimately dissolve
its opponents.
These actions were widely seen as tyrannical,
but they set such a high bar for success that
activists were more likely to succumb to defeatism
than to try and match that power.
In that sense, perhaps King Louis XVI, who
desired the love of his subjects, represented
the perfect opportunity to bring about the
French Revolution.
*
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