The French Revolution in Miniature: Section Droits-De-L'Homme, 1789-1795

by Morris Slavin

Overview

Focusing on the social, economic, and political developments in one neighborhood, and particularly on the origin, growth, and decline of its revolutionary institutions, he shows the impact of the Revolution on its citizens. At the same time, he reveals the contributions of average men and women, the so-called petits gens, to the changes that occurred in France between 1789 and 1795.

Originally published in 1984.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691640754
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	04/19/2016
Series:	Princeton Legacy Library , #600
Pages:	470
Product dimensions:	7.10(w) x 10.10(h) x 1.50(d)

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The French Revolution in Miniature

Section Droits-de-l'Homme, 1789-1795

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By Morris Slavin

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1984 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-05415-5

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CHAPTER 1

The Socioeconomic Base

Writing in the Tableau de Paris, its publisher saw the Marais as a world of boredom and intolerance. He was convinced that

there reigns ... the total accumulation of all the old prejudices. ... There one may see the old grumblers, gloomy enemies of all new ideas. ... They call the philosophes people to be burned at the stake (gens à bruler). One sees there antique furniture, which seems to concentrate the prejudices and ridiculous customs.

Even the pretty women that a fatal star has consigned to this sad quarter, dare not receive anyone but the old military men or the old gentlemen of the robe.

Today scholars question the literary exaggerations of Mercier. Although the Marais was losing many of its wealthier residents to the new quartiers, enough wealth, and the influence that accompanies it, remained to maintain traces of its past glory. A population of almost 120,000 subdivided into a dozen classes with their myriad professional and occupational groups could hardly have ceased their normal activities. If some of these enterprises were not as vigorous and dynamic as in the past, they still reflected life, work, and growth.

Of the social classes in the Marais, the nobility of both robe and sword was by far the wealthiest and the most powerful. Constituting but 5 percent of the population, it held more than 70 percent of all personal property in the district. Together with the value of real estate, its total holdings rose to 75 percent. It was this wealth, in addition to the prestige of ancient blood, that gave the nobility its preponderant social weight. All classes were linked to it economically, and, consequently, were dependent upon it. As Roche puts it:

Members of the Parlement and of the councils, the military, the gentlemen of the robe — all give a certain countenance to the quarter. Everyone draws activity from it: domestics, wholesale merchants, and artisans, but also men of law, linked to the nobles by their business. The Revolution will be necessary to drain off the inhabitants of the Marais, and to modify, not the setting, but the social reality of the eighteenth century.

The flight of the nobility at the outbreak of the Revolution was bound, therefore, to disorganize profoundly the economic life of the Marais.

In contrast to the castelike rigidity of the Marais nobility was the mobility of the bourgeoisie. Relatively open, this comparatively young class was rapidly losing traces of its rural origins. The city, with its complex relations among the classes, helped draw closer the commercial middle class, a portion of the liberal profession, and the bourgeoisie proper. Marriage, of course, was an important means of rising socially. Moreover, although the wealth of the bourgeoisie was far below that of the nobility, it was considerably higher than that of the artisans. The bourgeoisie possessed real estate, of course, but 70 percent of its wealth was in bonds or dividends. This, more than any other single factor, made it a class apart.

The poor and near-poor played a minor role in eighteenth-century political life. They were far too busy scrabbling for a living. Where there was little or no industry or commerce, as in most of the neighborhoods of section Roi-de-Sicile, their plight was doubly hard. What little business existed was concentrated in portions of the streets of Ecouffes and of Juifs, near the La Force prison. The peddlers of the streets of Fourcy and of Nonnains d'Hyères, the stonemasons living in furnished rooms of rue de la Mortellerie, and the day laborers of section Maison-Commune, Arsenal, Place-Royale, and Roi-de-Sicile were uninterested in politics. The Revolution would awaken some of them, but without property, education, or leisure they would sink back to the lower depths again.

If the Marais numbered 120,000 people, what was the total population of the capital and of its individual sections on the eve of the Revolution? A number of demographic studies that have appeared in the last decade have sought to answer this question. Lack of documents for various sections makes it difficult to be certain of the answers. Moreover, eighteenth-century statistics, as is well known, are often inaccurate, incomplete, and unreliable. This is especially true of its population figures. Early statisticians multiplied the number of births by a coefficient often adopted arbitrarily, then verified the figure by taking a sample in order to arrive at an approximate number of inhabitants. Thus, Paris was thought to have 650,000 people in 1789, which, in theory, included the floating portion of the population — the poor wage-workers, vagabonds, women workers, immigrants, and child laborers. Contemporary sources varied in their estimates, but none dipped much below 650,000 or rose significantly higher than 700,000.

If it is difficult to obtain an exact figure of Parisians during the Revolution, it is no less so for section Droits-de-l'Homme. From 1793 to 1807, population statistics fluctuate around the figure of 11,000. Only the returns of 11 pluviôse, Year III (30 January 1795) give a substantially larger figure of 12,321. If the latter returns are accurate, the section must have suffered a considerable exodus, as district Petit-Saint-Antoine reported a total of 19,425 individuals in the census of 1790. The "scientific" nature of these surveys may be gauged from the method of gathering data on 28 prairial, Year V (16 June 1796), which gave section Droits-de-l'Homme a total of 11,710 "inhabitants." Among the latter were 34 horses and 50 "dead defenders"! Other returns are no less questionable.

Whether the population of section Droits-de-l'Homme numbered more than 12,000 or less, a more significant question is the approximate density of this population. There is hardly need to stress that a high density in a district or section is often an indication of the latter's relative affluence or poverty, and all the social tensions that crowded conditions bring in their train. It was this problem that the Russian scholar, N. Karéiev, sought to resolve. Using various plans of the capital drafted during the eighteenth century, and especially that of Verniquet and the Almanach de l'an III (reproduced by Mellié), he finally decided to measure the area himself. Then, finding the same confusion in the population statistics of the city, he resolved, finally, that the survey of the Year V (1797) by the bureaux de bienfaisance des 48 sections, which counted the number of "mouths to feed," was the most accurate. The latter gave a total figure of 551,347 for the capital, not including those serving in the army or the "non-domiciled."

The Plan de Paris (Map 2) and the table of population and area (Table 1) demonstrate that section Arcis, neighbor of Droits-de-l'Homme, had the highest density, with 580 people per 1,000 sq. toises, or 479 per acre. The smallest, Champs-Elysées, had a mere 9 per acre, a ratio of 53 to 1. Section Droits-de-l'Homme numbered 289 per acre, which compared with its neighbors in the seventh arrondissement as follows: Beaubourg (Réunion) had 260, Enfants-Rouges (Marais, Homme-Armé) numbered 109, and Hotel-de-Ville (Maison-Commune, Fidelité) counted 251 per acre. The median for the sections on a scale from 580 to 11 was 212.35 per acre (or 175.5 per 1,000 sq. toises as in Table 1). Section Droits-de-l'Homme, thus, had about 77 individuals per acre above the median. These figures can be compared with London of 1801, which within its walls included 380 acres with a population of 63,832, thus having 168 persons per acre, a little below the median figure for the sections of Paris a decade earlier. The total area of section Droits-de-l'Homme was 1.08 sq. mi. or 692.2 acres.

Forty years before the Revolution, the city housed its population in 23,565 dwellings, making an average of 29-70 inhabitants per structure.19 According to the census of 1790 for district Petit-Saint-Antoine, 19,425 residents occupied 659 houses; thus the district would have had 29.47 persons per house, almost the same figure as for the rest of Paris. The census of 1807, as seen above (10,779 individuals occupying 509 houses), would have made the concentration of 21 individuals per house, a marked reduction from the survey of 1790. This corresponds to the trend during the last decades of the eighteenth century for Paris, which was to lose population to the newer districts and faubourgs, a tendency aggravated still further by the Revolution.

District Petit-Saint-Antoine had received a projected plan for the reorganization of Paris as early as 20 August 1789, drafted by commissioners of the Commune on 12 August. That the census of 1790, which listed twenty-one streets for the district, was inaccurate has already been mentioned. Added to the erroneous totals of population is the inexplicable omission of a main street like Roi-de-Sicile — despite the registrar's assurance to his superiors in an introductory note that his figures were based on the work of census commissioners "after the most rigorous examination, and the most exact investigation," neither of which was true. Furthermore, the map of Verniquet indicates clearly that the district contained another dozen short streets and alleys not mentioned in this report. Finally, the scheme that was to form the basis of the new political division depended on the number of active citizens residing in each district, making it even more difficult to understand how whole streets could be omitted from this survey.

As we bear these caveats in mind, what did the census of 1790 reveal about district Petit-Saint-Antoine? Table 2 has been rearranged on the basis of the total number of inhabitants per street, in descending order. The table demonstrates that Marché-Saint-Jean had the highest number of dwellers per house, about 67 individuals, followed by Verrerie with 59 and Tisseranderie with 58. The lowest concentration was on rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine with 5, succeeded by Poterie with 6. The median for the number of individuals per dwelling is 12, shared by Pavée and Coquilles. A word of caution is necessary in dealing with percentages of active citizens for the last four streets of the table. It seems hardly conceivable that Coq, with 90 individuals living in 11 different houses would have 40 active citizens, a ratio of one active citizen for every 2.25 persons. Where were the children and servants, it might be asked. Deux-Portes and Culture-Sainte-Catherine show an equally high proportion — about one per three.

If the percentages of active citizens are accepted, then it could be argued that these streets were the most affluent of the neighborhood. On the other hand, the tax assessments of real estate and personal property (discussed below) do not bear out such a conclusion. The poorest street, from the point of view of number of active citizens, was Marché-Saint-Jean with fewer than 5, followed by Billettes with about 8. Verrerie, despite its relative concentration of people per structure, numbered fewer than 12 active citizens, while Tisseranderie had 8, and Saint-Antoine fewer than 5. The majority of streets, as is evident, had houses with one, two, or three active citizens living in them.

This wide dispersion of active citizens on most of the streets makes clear that although a number of the latter were undoubtedly more desirable than others, rich and poor resided on the same streets and occupied, probably, the same houses, with the traditional separations of bourgeoisie and professional classes living on the lower floors while the poor took the upper, with the poorest in the garrets. Rues du Coq and des Deux-Portes, with their high percentage of active citizens, were on the extreme west side of the district, whereas rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine, with its next higher ratio of active citizens, was on the east side. The relatively small number of active citizens on Marché-Saint-Jean might have been due to its having been a cemetery, or, more likely, to the noise and refuse that the market would have brought in its train. The proportion of active citizens to the total number of inhabitants in the district and in the section remained constant. In 1790 Paris had a total of 78,090 active citizens. In 1789 the 2,229 active citizens of district Petit-Saint-Antoine formed 2.2 percent of all actives in the city; in the fall of 1790 section Roi-de-Sicile held 1,699 active citizens, which was the same percentage of all active citizens of Paris.

Whether one were an active citizen and could afford to live on the lower floors, or were a passive citizen and had to inhabit the upper stories, the more crowded neighborhoods could not have been very pleasant. For one thing, the streets on which these houses stood were so narrow, and the structures themselves so tall, rising to seven and eight stories, that the sun seldom shone into the rooms. The poor who sought shelter in their hovels suffered especially from lack of sunlight. Physicians were observant enough to realize that the dampness and darkness of these streets made for ill health among their inhabitants. A concerned reformer suggested, for example, that the proportion between "the height of houses, relative to the length of streets, be rigorously observed. On several very narrow streets, the houses are of a stupendous height, and these streets are like infected wells where one breathes the most unwholesome air."

Moreover, the residents of these edifices, which were often badly constructed, paid high rents. In 1790, 3 percent of the Parisians expended from 1,600 to 10,000 livres annually on rent. The majority (58 percent) spent 40 to 200 livres a year. The percentage of a workingman's budget spent on rent is difficult to determine, but it must have averaged less than 10 percent. The badly furnished rooms of the maisons garnies received the poor and the disinherited, who often moved every three months in order to avoid paying rent. (Unlike the custom in the United States, rent was paid quarterly in France.) This lack of stability often punished the principal tenants and proprietors who were left to settle the rent of their runaway lodgers. The crisis was not eased until 1791, when many artisans left Paris because of unemployment in the luxury trades caused by emigration of the nobility and clergy. Later, the levée en masse contributed to easing the housing problem by removing many young men from the city. Shortly thereafter, the harsh law against foreigners forced many of them to flee the capital, thus making more dwellings available. Not until 1795 was this trend reversed again, and the housing crisis reappeared.

How did the inhabitants of these houses earn a living? It is well known that the labor force in the urban centers of eighteenth-century France was composed, largely, of artisans and craftsmen. The vast majority who toiled in the capital inhabited this world of the artisan — often indistinguishable from the small retailer who manufactured his own goods and then sold his products in a shop to which his living quarters were attached. The militia list of 13-14 July 1789, which carries a total of 1,214 names of volunteers for the Parisian Guard who resided in district Petit-Saint-Antoine, reflects this world of the craftsman and presents a kind of infrastructure, a physionomie sociale, of section Roi-de-Sicile. Of these 1,214 names 316 failed to give their occupation, or the secretary did not record it. Thus, a total of 898 residents of district Petit-Saint-Antione may be classified by occupation as in Table 3.

(Continues...)

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Table of Contents

• FrontMatter, pg. i
• Contents, pg. vii
• List of Figures. List of Maps. List of Tables, pg. ix
• Preface, pg. xi
• Abbreviations, pg. xv
• A Word of Explanation, pg. xvi
• INTRODUCTION: The Setting, pg. 1
• I. The Socioeconomic Base, pg. 21
• II. The Districts and the Fall of the Bastille, pg. 53
• III. From District to Section, pg. 76
• IV. From Varennes to the Fall of the Monarchy, pg. 104
• V. From the Fall of the Monarchy to the Fall of Robespierre, pg. 127
• VI. Shortages and the Struggle for the Maximum, pg. 171
• VII. The Primary, General, and Electoral Assemblies 192, pg. 192
• APPENDIX. Electors from Section Roi-de-Sicile, pg. 209
• VIII. The Civil Committee, pg. 214
• IX. The Revolutionary Committee, pg. 244
• X. The Committee of Welfare, the Justice of the Peace, and the Police Commissioner, pg. 278
• XI. The Armed Force and the Popular Society, pg. 312
• XII. Patriotism and Religion, pg. 344
• XIII. Germinal, Prairial, Vendemiaire, pg. 364
• Conclusion, pg. 396
• Bibliography, pg. 413
• Index, pg. 439