Revolutionary justice in Paris, 1789-1790

About this book

This book examines how France's revolutionary authorities handled political opposition in the year following the fall of the Bastille. Though demands for more severe treatment of the enemies of the new regime were frequently and loudly expressed, and though portents and warning signs of the coming unwillingness to tolerate opposition were hardly lacking, political justice in 1789-90 was in fact characterized by a remarkable degree of indulgence and forbearance. Through an investigation of the judicial affairs which attracted the most public attention in Paris during this period, this study seeks to identify the factors which produced a temporary victory for policies of mildness and restraint. Though much recent historical research has been guided by Michel Foucault's contention that the benevolent slogans of the late eighteenth-century judicial reform movement masked a hidden agenda which stressed "social control," this study's analysis of early revolutionary judicial practices indicates that traditional conceptions about Enlightenment "humanitarianism" should be taken more seriously than they are sometimes taken by current historians. For rather than seeing the Reign of Terror of 1793-4 as being implicitly embedded in pre-revolutionary ideology, as Francois Furet and others argue, this study emphasizes the restraining influence of ideology and locates the source of pressure for the future Terror in popular demands for justice and vengeance and in the political dynamics generated by these demands. In this work, the most important link between the revolutionary justice of 1789-1790 and the Terror is the loss of political credit suffered by the moderate Fayettist politicians who pursued the lenient and conciliatory judicial policies that marked the Revolution's first phase.