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A Directory Rules France:
The fall of the Jacobin government
allowed the wealthier middle classes to seize power. A new constitution was
introduced which denied the vote to non-propertied sections of society. It
provided for two elected legislative councils. These then appointed a Directory,
an executive made up of five members. This was meant as a safeguard against the
concentration of power in a one-man executive as under the Jacobins. However,
the Directors often clashed with the legislative councils, who then sought to
dismiss them. The political instability of the Directory paved the way for the
rise of a military dictator, Napoleon Bonaparte.
In 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte crowned
himself Emperor of France. He set out to conquer neighbouring European
countries, dispossessing dynasties and creating kingdoms where he placed
members of his family. Napoleon saw his role as a moderniser of Europe. He
introduced many laws such as the protection of private property and a uniform
system of weights and measures provided by the decimal system. Initially, many saw
Napoleon as a liberator who would bring freedom for the people. But soon the
Napoleonic armies came to be viewed everywhere as an invading force. He was
finally defeated at Waterloo in 1815. Many of his measures that carried the
revolutionary ideas of liberty and modern laws to other parts of Europe had an
impact on people long after Napoleon had left.
The Revolution and Everyday Life:
Can politics change the
clothes people wear, the language they speak or the books they read? The years
following 1789 in France saw many such changes in the lives of men, women and
children. The revolutionary governments took it upon themselves to pass laws
that would translate the ideals of liberty and equality into everyday practice.
One important law that came into effect
soon after the storming of the Bastille in the summer of 1789 was the abolition
of censorship. In the Old Regime all written material and cultural
activities . books, newspapers,
plays could be published or performed only after they had been approved by the
censors of the king. Now the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen
proclaimed freedom of speech and expression to be a natural right. Newspapers,
pamphlets, books and printed pictures flooded
the towns of France from where they travelled rapidly into the countryside.
They all described and discussed the events and changes taking place in France.
Freedom of the press also meant that opposing views of events could be
expressed. Each side sought to convince the others of its position through the
medium of print. Plays, songs and festive processions attracted large numbers of
people. This was one way they could grasp and identify with ideas such as
liberty or justice that political philosophers wrote about at length in texts
which only a handful of educated people could read.
The ideas of liberty and democratic rights were the most important legacy of the French Revolution. These spread from France to the rest of Europe during the nineteenth century, where feudal systems
were abolished. Colonised peoples reworked the idea of freedom from bondage into their movements to create a sovereign nation state.
Tipu Sultan and
Rammohan Roy are two examples of individuals who responded to the ideas coming from revolutionary France.
Raja Rammohan Roy was one of those who was inspired by new ideas that were spreading through Europe at that time. The French Revolution and later, the July Revolution excited his imagination.
‘He could think and talk of nothing else when he heard of the July Revolution in France in 1830.
On his way to England at Cape Town he insisted on visiting frigates (warships) flying the revolutionary tri-colour flag though he had been temporarily lamed by an accident.’
Susobhan Sarkar, Notes on the Bengal Renaissance 1946.
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