Peter N. Stearns

Social Structures, Political Elites and Ideology in Revolutionary Paris, 1792-94: A Critical Evaluation of Albert Soboul's "Les sans-culottes parisiens en l'an II" Author(s): Richard Mowery Andrews Source: Journal of Social History, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Autumn, 1985), pp. 71-112 Published by: Peter N. Stearns Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3787919 Accessed: 26/01/2010 18:33

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http://www.jstor.org SOCIAL STRUCTURES, POLITICAL ELITES AND IDEOLOGY IN REVOLUTIONARY PARIS, 1792-94: A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF ALBERT SOBOUL'S LES SANS-CULOITES PARISIENS EN LAN H

Since 1958,the late AlbertSoboul's massive thesis has reignedas the authoritative historyof RevolutionaryParis in 1793-94and of the "sans-culotterie."It has been the object of polemics, but not of one systematiccritique based on primarysources.1 Soboul'sconclusions are received academic knowledge, conveyed as truthsin myriads of textbooksand generalhistories of the Revolution.I am presentlycompleting a thematichistory entitled "Power, Disorder and Order in RevolutionaryParis, 1792-96," whose methodsand conclusionsstand in contradictionto most of those of Les sans- culottesparisiens. Here, I cannotdo full criticaljustice to Soboul'spioneering work. The problemsare not those of slivers of positive knowledge.They are those of comprehendingthe greatmetropolis during the most creativeand mysteriousepoch of the GreatRevolution. I am obligedto leavecertain major problems unexplored in this essay:the antagonismsbetween the metropolisand the agrarianprovinces; anti- clericalism;general policing of the City; the incidenceof Terrorand Counter-Terror. Powerwithin the Parissections of 1792-94- its socialcomposition, dynamics, and ideology - is the generalsubject of this essay. I shall endeavorto demonstratethat betweenthe socialcomposition of the "sans-culotte"leadership and the generalideology of the "sans-culotte"movement there was a coherencefar more extensive than Soboul, and succeedinghistorians, perceived. The scale and ambitionof Les sans-culottesparisiens have been commandingly seductive.The scale was all of Parisand its relationswith the RevolutionaryState in 1793-94.Soboul's ambition was comprehensive"history from below," a materialist descriptionof the Parisian"sans-culotterie" as an autonomouspopular movement and the compellingforce behindthe Revolutionarygovernment in 1793.He wished to accomplishfor Paris what Georges Lefebvreachieved for rural France of the Revolutionaryera in the Paysansdu Nord.In prefaceto the 1959edition of thatwork, he and ArmandoSaitta described Lefebvre's "perspective from below"as "theonly validplane for historiographicresearch and reconstruction."2 Soboul stated his purpose in the introductionto Les sans-culottesparisiens: One groupof Old Regimeand RevolutionaryFrance does not appear[in historiesof the period]in its genuineplace; this is the groupthat was knownby contemporaries as the 'sans-culottes.'(p. 5) Mosthistorians, with differences of emphasisthat can doubtlessbe explainedby their temperaments,social origins and the times in which they lived, have tended to underestimateor depreciatethe originaland specific character of the popularrevolution. (p. 10) Withinthe frameworkof Parisand the chronologicallimits which we haveset, it is our concernto demonstratethat the popularmovement possessed its own autonomyand indentity.(p. 18) From the inception of the narrativeand in the articulationof the sources, one senses thatSoboul's categories for interpretingRevolutionary Paris were pre-determinedby his desireto recreatea "popularmovement," synonymous with the "sans-culotterie," 72 journalof social history that was socially and politically distinct from the Jacobins and the MontagnardState, distinct from the "bourgeois Revolution."Were Soboul's interpretive categories valid empirically?

Masses and Elites in Sectionary Paris The "frameworkof Paris"was rigidlycircumscribed in Les sans-culottesparisiens. The metropolis was not a protagonist of Soboul's history. It was merely a place. There was no exploration of relations between "quartiers"and sections, between socio- economic geographies and local politics. We were given the impression that there were no significant differences, social or political, between the section Amis-de-la-Patrie and the section Lepeletier, that is, between the northern half of the rue Saint-Denis, simultaneously industrial, artisanal, mercantile and proletarian, and the "quartier"of the Bourse, of ministries of state, "rentiers,"financiers, barristersand luxury purveyors; no significant differences between the section Rdvolutionnaireand the section Sans- Culottes, that is, between the crafted, distinguished and affluent "quartier"of the Pont- Neuf and the peripheral, sprawling and very poor Faubourgs Saint-Victorand Saint- Marcel. Paris, the great and determining City, was a presence shadowy and inert in Les sans-culottesparisiens. Soboul's history of the sections from June, 1793 to mid-July, 1794 described them horizontally,en masse, throughessentially public actions or repressiveactions (selected incarcerations). Since the language of revolution was homogeneous throughout Paris by the Year II, for Soboul militancy itself was presumably homogeneous through the City. All protagonistslived within a rhetoricalcategory and only there: Jacobin, "sans- culotte,""extreme patriot,""absentionist" or "indifferent"("insouciant") "moderate." Thousandsof Parisiansmarched across these pages. Who were they? Soboul described them only by nomenclaturesof trade or occupation (with sparse and uncertainnotations of income), by formaloffices or roles in 1793-94,and by their languageand the language of their enemies in 1793-95. No section and its personnel were examined in depth, nor were Terrorand Counter-Terror.No protagonists were studied in the duration of their social and civic careers. We were presented with a huge, ghostly procession of figurations, within which marched an ostensible "popular movement." A popular movement connotes sustained mass action. The most serious distortions of metropolitanpolitics in Les sans-culottesparisiens concern the "popularmasses" as citizens or political actors. From June, 1790 to October, 1793, general assemblies of the forty-eight sections were the matrix of local politics and democracy. Until December, 1793they elected all sectionaryofficials and decided most sectionaryactions. Participationin these assemblies was the measure of popular involvementin the politics of the ParisianRevolution. In chapter5 and appendix4, Soboul revealedthat attendance in general assemblies, and even popular societies, was sporadic and fractional in 1792-94. Only rarely did ten percent of those eligible to vote attend, even at times of majorcrises and political decisions. This fractionalpresence remainedcharacteristic during the Year II, when penurious citizens were paid an indemnity of two "livres" per session for their attendance.3 No de facto increase in participation followed the dejure passage from censitary to democratic suffrage in August, 1792. The proportion of socially modest and laboring voters increased slightly within the small percentage of those in regular attendance. Soboul conceded in part II that sectionary politics were "revolutionary democracy," not "popular democracy," in 1793-94: the sovereign assemblies were an arena of "active minorities," with the "sans-culotte"minority as agents of the absent "popularmasses." But in the narrativeof sectionarypolitics, Soboul wrote a contradictoryhistory - one of continual, trans-Parisian,and decisive "popular REVOLUTIONARY PARIS 73

movements,""popular thrusts," "popular ferments, and "popular paroxysms." "Popular:" the incantatoryword occurs in almostevery third sentence of the book, andin every conceivablegrammatical form. Despite the sweepingvelocity of Soboul'srhetoric, the "popularmasses" of Pariswere absentas citizens from the concrete,quotidian politicallife of the sections.4 Sobouldefined the "popular masses" of Parisalmost exclusively as subsistentialwage earners and consumers, without analyzing them. "Plebeians"is our alternative definition.It encompassesall thosewithout real, commercial or manufacturingproperty (excepttools), who lackedmarketable skills or literacy,who livedby wage,piece-rate or remunerationin goods,by institutionalcharity, begging, prostitution, street hawking (messengers,hucksters) and hustles (story-telling, making music, performing stunts), by directingappropriation of subsistence(scavenging, fraud, theft), and by all combinationsof the above. The definitionis capacious,as was the popularreality. Ingeniousmotility in combiningseveral modes of existence, not persistentlabor, characterizedmost plebeiansin eighteenthcentury Paris. They were savantin arts and valuesof survivalthat were not those of a tamedwage-earning laboring class. "Proletarians,""pre-proletarians," and "laboringpoor" are brittlereductionist terms whenapplied to this vitalmass, whose members passed in andout of varietiesof labor - oftenat long intervalsand over extensive migratory spaces - just as theyoscillated betweenfestive surfeitsand grim penuriesof consumption.5 The plebeiansof Parisexisted in five generalpolitical modes in 1792-94,each of themdefined or manipulatedby the "sans-culotterie"and the Jacobins.(1) They were a talismanic,legitimating constituency invoked as sovereignby thoseacting on its behalf (militantsand officials of the "sans-culotterie,"Jacobins of the Convention)and a penumbral,hovering threat to orderfor adversariesof "sans-culottes"and Jacobins - a threatincarnated during the prisonmassacres of September,1792 and the grocery riots of February,1793. (2) Theirpressures were selectivelychanneled into politics by the"sans-culotte" leadership. When mobilized by thatleadership, they participated dramaticallybut ritualisticallyin politics, especiallyduring "joumrnees" and decisive confrontationsbetween factions within general assemblies. During the "regeneration" battlesof thespring and summer of 1793by which"sans-culottes" won official sectionary power,plebeians appeared forcefully in the generalassemblies - not as atomistic individualvoters, but as groupsof workersmobilized by their"sans-culotte" employers for temporarymuscle when ballotswere to be cast by fists and feet. These "popular votes"were transpositions to sovereigngeneral assemblies of sovereigndisciplines and subordinationsprevailing on worksites or in ateliers.6(3) Residentadult males among this populacewere organized and armed in sectionarybatallions, led by officerswho wereusually "sans-culotte" political leaders in the YearII. Forcesof orderfor Jacobin Paris,they policed the metropolis,marched in the "journdes,"and provided a general reservefor the armiesof the Republic.As MarcelReinhard wrote: It is therethat one found numbers and mass: more than 116,000 men in January,1793, distributedamong 886 companieswith an averageof 2,400per section, whereas the assembliesgrouped only threeto four hundredcitizens.7 (4) Duringthe twelve monthsof 1793,the plebeiansof Parisgave the field armies almost 80,000 recruits,or regimentedcitizen-proletarians of war - for the soldier is also a proletarianand perhaps the mostexploited of all, if one considersthe wealth he createsfor his employers.They werealso testimonyto the politicalefficacy of the "sans-culotterie."(5) Finally,plebeians were recipientsof publiccharity and "sans- culotte"/Jacobineconomic patronage: price regulationof subsistencecommodities; statistprovisioning of the City; and work in war manufactures. 74 journalof social history The 3,800 to 4,000 individualofficials who formedthe cadresor the forty-eight sectionsand who ruleda city of 575,000to 600,000in 1793-YearII werenot a "mass movement."They were an oligarchy.Each sectionhad the followingcomplement of officials:sixteen civil commissioners;sixteen to twenty-fourwelfare commissioners; twelverevolutionary commissioners; one justice of thepeace with a recordingsecretary andsix assessors;one police commissionerwith a recordingsecretary; one hoarding commissioner;a president,vice-president and secretaryof the section'sgeneral assembly;the same offices for the associatedpopular society; threedeputies to the GeneralCouncil of the Commune;one deputyto the AdministrativeCouncil of the "ddpartement;"one deputyto the MunicipalRelief Commission; an averageof eighteen electors;and a captain,lieutenant and two secondlieutenants for each of an average of eighteenpara-military companies (seventy-two officers). This meant an averagetotal of 160 officialsin each section, who formeda governingclass. Theoretically,there wouldbe 7,680such officials for all Paris.In reality,the cumulationof politicaloffices amongthis personnel (concurrences of roles)was very extensive, and most committees were not regularlystaffed at full complement.On averageduring 1793-YearII, the 160 offices in a section were held by approximatelyeighty men. This meant a metropolitanruling class of some 3,840. That ruling class also formedalmost a numericalmajority of the entire"sans-culotterie." Democracyhas been a highlyparadoxical notion since the 1790s.Valuatively, it is one of the most consensuallyabsolute in modernlanguage. Empirically, it remains one of the most controversialand equivocal. AfterAugust, 1792, the sectionaryregime was based on universalmanhood suffrage of residents.But from 1790to 1793and beyond, sectionary elections were rarely "free votes"or directexpressions of popularsovereignty, except in rhetoricand ideology. Most commonly,they werecontests between factions of a small, assiduouspolitical class andoccasions for the perpetuationof oligarchicalstructures by co-optationand alliances.8In revolutionaryterms, the sectionaryprocedures for electingofficials and decidingpolicies in 1792-93were "democratic." In concreteterms, they werefusions of the forms and languageof democracywith oligarchicalpower. The fusion was expressedconsummately in theformula by whichthe Revolutionary Central Committee of Paris,executive arm of the electedsectionary delegates at the "Eveche"Palace in the Cite,arrogated supreme municipal authority during the Insurrectionof 31 May-2 June:"By the Willof the SovereignPeople, year II of the FrenchDemocratic Republic, this 31 May, 1793."9 This situationhas not been uniquein modernhistory. Oligarchy thrives in the soil of formalmass democracy. The "sans-culotte"oligarchy of Parishad a small active and consistentplebeian followingof militantsin clubsand general assemblies, who provided voting majorities (whetherby voices or fists) and who marginallyparticipated in power.It also had a hugepopular constituency that was civicly passive. That constituency existed in three fundamentalrelations to the "sans-culotte"leadership: as a sourcefor recruitmentof plebeianmilitants (including a portionof revolutionarycommissioners of the Year II); as a latentmasse de manoeuvreto be mobilizedfor "journees,"general labor, and militaryservice; as a populaceto be policed, educated,and transformedinto a disciplined,industrious republican citizenry. Therewere many social cleavages in lateeighteenth century Paris. Perhaps the most politicallysignificant of them, in 1792-94,was the one separatingthose who hadthe social means,and thus freedom,to choose the "sans-culotte"career and its vocation of powerfrom those, constrainedby wageor excludedby transience,who had only thefreedom either to followthe "sans-culotte"leadership or to abstainfrom civic action. REVOLUTIONARYPARIS 75

Politically,there was no "autonomouspopular movement"in RevolutionaryParis. Who, then, composed the "sans-culotte"oligarchy?

The "Sans-culotterie:" Rhetoric and Realities Much of Soboul's history of the "sans-culotterie"is transcriptionof political rhetoric - the rhetoric of "sans-culottes"and their enemies in 1793-95 - and then ascription of social identities and meanings to that rhetoric. He never isolated rhetoric as a problem, or distinguished it from actions and realities. "Civisme"(good or militantcitizenship) in RevolutionaryParis was indeed essentially rhetorical. Its dominant presence was words - statements, speeches, resolutions, petitions, denunciations - spoken by individuals and groups in clubs, section general assemblies, municipal councils, committees, public gatherings, and the streets. "Anticivisme"- the crimes of royalism, federalism, aristocracyor, in 1795,of terrorism and anarchism - was proportionately verbal and centered in the same forums. To be ostentatiouslyand assiduously expressive in these forums was to be militant, whether revolutionaryor counter-revolutionary.In 1792-94, this militancy of the spoken word was a prerequisitefor election or appointmentto sectionary, municipal, or government offices, for monied careers of written discourse. Insurrectionary "journmes,"days of action, occurred at long intervals. Always, they were preparedand decisively propelled by rhetoric. So great was the importance of rhetoric that silence - abstention from civic discourse and its forums - was rendered criminally suspect in October, 1793.10 Rhetoricattained extreme potency in 1792-95;the traditionalauthorities that disciplined public language and actions, Monarchy and the Church, had been recently destroyed or renderedpowerless. In the policing of rhetoric by Terrorand Counter-Terror,"sans- culottes" and their adversaries each achieved moral self-avowal, but not social self- revelation:we are what we are, not by our genuine class positions, but by our discourse; our enemies define themselves (and us) by their oppositional discourse. Discourse had extraordinary plasticity and force in Revolutionary Paris. It provided shifting definitions of political community and mechanisms of exclusion. Eminently manipulable, it could mask realities. Soboul read that discourse literally. Soboul'sgoal in Les sans-culottesparisiens was linear,but his generalmethod was inadvertentlycircular. The goal was to formulatea materialistexplanation for sectionary politics by reducingpersonnel and policies to forces and antagonismsof socio-economic class, and thence to narrate the development of the Parisian Revolution throughout the YearII. But his sources for this enterprisewere political, and in large part rhetorical. He attemptedto overcome this problem of possibly grave disjunctionsbetween political sources and socio-economic realities simply by grafting onto these sources putative class interpretationsof personnel, their motives, and the content of their politics. The grafting was accomplished by two equally deformationalmethods: the speculative and usually false derivation of class positions from the simple occupations revealed in the political dossiers of militants; and the circularity of rephrasingin modem class terms - such as "salariedworkers," "independent artisans," "shopkeeper petty bourgeoisie," "middle class," or "upper commercial bourgeoisie" - the frequently tendentious identities that the protagonists either asserted for themselves or were given by their enemies in these sources. In his social analysis, Soboul never broke out of tautological entrapmentby political documents, entrapmentby their partisan distortions and their intended silences. Some 347 cartons of individual dossiers in the F7 series of the Archives nationales formed the most importantsegment of Soboul's documentationon the "sans-culotterie" and the political history of Paris in 1793-94. Rich and indispensable, but chaotic and 76 journal of social history treacherous for any social analysis, these dossiers are transcriptions and polemical interpretationsof politics. They are not a collection of authentic social identities. Solid indications of a person's wealth, class and status appear occasionally, but only under critical scrutiny of a dossier. Here, one listens principally to the strident voices of those imprisoned and who want the Committees of government to release them (and to jail their local persecutors) or the voices of those who have incarceratedthem (as counter-revolutionary suspects or anarchists and terrorists) and are attempting to persuade the same Committees to keep them in prison. Voices of denunciation and counter-denunciation, they were necessarily hyperbolic even within a universe of charged rhetoric: A manwithout an income,without even a domicilein 1789... he wasliving in the most dissolutemisery that laziness, debaucheryand ignorancecan produce. Fen6auxhas thatdark, sinisterand ferociouslook which revealsall the basenessof his soul. Cordas,with his loud and presumptuousvoice (a characteristicof the ignorant),got himselfadmired by the leasteducated class of thesection... He deifiedanarchy in shouting at the top of his lungs thatsince the Peoplehas insurrectedit shouldrecognize no law other than its sovereignwill, or, what is more accurate,the will of demagogues... He was the abbeMaury [a prominentroyalist writer] of the sectionand the oratorof aristocracy,one of the leadersof the coalitionformed in the generalassembly to annihilate democracy. By mid-1793, the period at which Soboul's history begins, "sans-culotte"rhetoric of characterizationwas rapidly narrowingdown to the opaque dichotomy of "aristocratie" versus "peuple." The "sans-culotte"officials of the Paris sections in 1793-YearII were a paternalist and populist oligarchy of the literate, skilled, and propertied. Jacobin orthodoxy in the Municipality and in the Committees of the Convention was equally paternalist and populist. In Paris of 1793-94, one of the principal techniques of rule - and of self-disculpationby the victims of rule - was hortatoryself-assimilation to the laboring classes. Sectionary officials of the "sans-culotterie"most usually blurred or concealed their personal wealth or social status in the documents of F7. In depicting their conservative adversaries, they commonly exaggerated wealth. These latter, when ascendant during the purges of 1795, frequently misrepresented their "sans-culotte" enemies as "canaille,"or rabble. Personal wealth was tainted in Jacobin Paris. It was to be admitted only in extremis and only in a paternalist or altruistic mode: My imprisonmentnot only plungesmy familyinto the most cruel indigence,but also paralyzesthe operationsof greatnumbers of ribbon,gauze and fringe manufacturers for whomI maketools and, I dare say, with such success thatI have neverbeen tempted by anothertrade. A simpleartisan of modestmeans, who has workedfor morethan thirty years. in 1792,I armedand equippedthree volunteersfor the armies.12 Rhetorical manipulations of social identities, and plain mendacity or contrivance in presentations of self, are almost systematic in the prison dossiers of F7, a reality unacknowledgedby Soboul. Politics in the Revolutionarymetropolis was, at multiple levels, an immense exercise in guile and cunning, in social masks and metamorphoses. These were also fundamental qualities of Parisian life and communications during the Old Regime and the Revolution, qualities of urban culture.13 For immigrants, initiation to arts of self-presentation was much of becoming Parisian. In 1792-95, this artfulness had stakes higher even than success in eroticism, business, clientage and election to office or appointment to government salaries. It could influence whether or not one went to prison and whether one remained there. REVOLUTIONARYPARIS 77 Social and economicdocumentation must be juxtaposedwith politicalsources in the study of RevolutionaryParis. The following are the main categoriesof such documentationthat I have used: (1)The dossiersof wage-payingemployers at all levels in sectorsof productionand manufacturingfrom forty-two of the forty-eightsections, for the years 1790-92,in the F30 seriesof the Archivesnationales. I havecopied their totality, some 3,800 individual dossiers.The socio-economicrichness and precisionof this sourcelie in disclosing specificranges and hierarchies of production.I use it for the followingpurposes: (a) nominativeidentification of employers,including "sans-culottes" and their adversaries; (b) hierarchiesin scale of productionby all trades, section by section; (c) local geographiesof enterprisewithin sections and throughout Paris, down to precisestreet addresses;(d) wage differentialsand the organizationof tasks within trades; (e) seasonalitiesof employment,expansions and contractionsof the labor market.14 (2) Lists of "active"and "eligible"citizens of varioussections during the censitary regime(in 1790-91);some of these give the amountpaid by each in tax on annual income. (3) The "cartesde suirete"(identity cards) registered from thirty-onesections and encompassingsome 75,000 of the adultmale population resident in 1793-YearII. Marcel Reinhardand his colleaguesdiscovered and developedthis sourceduring the 1960s and 1970s.It is extremelyvaluable for socio-biographicalstudy of sectionarypersonnel, forthe socialgeography of Paris,and for dataon immigrationand literacy. The typical registrationgives name, age, trade, address,previous address, birthplace, date of immigrationto Paris, and signature.15 (4) TheSommier of biensnationaux, sales of nationalizedproperties by sectionfrom 1790. (5) Recordsof insolvenciesand bankruptcies,especially in the Directorialyears, in the Archivesdepartementales de la Siene. (6) Tablesof municipal,"departement," and governmentemployees (notably the principalministries), which often give occupationaland salary histories of personnel. (7) Recordsof sectionarypolice commissionersin the Archivesof Prefectureof Police. These containa wealthof material:descriptions and inventoriesof "cadres de vie" of all classes; disclosuresof social relations;relations of commerceand production;sexuality; public and privateconflicts; violence and crime. (8) A largemonographic and manuscript literature on the"quartiers" of late eighteenth centuryParis. From these socio-economicsources, we can derive a generalization:the "sans- culotterie"of 1793-YearII - the approximately3,840 sectionaryofficials who ruled Pariswas bourgeoisin its social aggregate,and absolutelyby comparisonwith the populationit ruled.It was so by its manufacturingand commercial capital, by its real propertiesand salariedincomes, by its skills in literacy,manipulation of ideological formulae,and governance.It had the powerto commandlabor on a largescale and to createdependencies, allegiances, and constituencies.From the vantageof this documentation,let us returnto the F7 series and its biographiesof militants,to the evidentialfoundation for Soboul's"social history" of sectionarypolitics in 1793-YearII. ConsiderAristarque Didot. He was frequentlycited by Soboulas a spokesmanfor the social radicalismof the "sans-culotterie"and for its most plebeianstratum, the "quarantesols" (those who received an indemnityof two"livres" per session for attending section generalassemblies during the YearII). Firstimprisoned on the instigationof the revolutionarycommittee as a "Hebertist" in February,1794, Didot was reincarceratedin May, 1795for havingbeen a principal terroristof theR&union section in 1793-YearII. Secretaryof the revolutionarycommittee 78 journal of social history fromits formationon 28 March,1793, he was its presidentin Septemberand October. In applyingthe Lawof Suspectswithin the section,Didot was harder, more adamantly proscriptivethan his colleagues. After they excludedhim from the committeein December,he and a few other renegade"sans-culotte" leaders mobilized the local popular society and the "quarantesols" of the general assembly to oppose the revolutionarycommittee.16 In 1793,Didot was a leadingideologist of the popular society and the generalassembly. In July, he drafteda resolutionagainst hoarding and speculationin foodstuffs and for nationalregulation of commerce in vital commodities.In November,the popularsociety published his Precissur la R,volution et le caracterefranqais, which attributedthe distressof the Republicto the ferocity of theallied monarchs, successive betrayals by parlementarians,ministers and generals, and "thegreed of merchants,the malice of the wealthy."17 To Soboul, there was perfectsymmetry between Didot's apparent social position ("formerlaw clerk"in the Parlementof Paris, aged twenty-fivein 1793)and his democraticradicalism. Didot himself asserted that symmetry from prison and claimed no incomebeyond his modestand brief salary (150 "livres" per month) as revolutionary commissioner.But his baptismalact is also in his F7 dossier.18 Born in 1768at St.-Firmin(Oise), he was the son of an affluentRoyal provincial magistrate- judicialcouncillor, administrator of forestsin the balliwickof Senlis, andchief receiver of fees in the chancelleryof the SenlisPresidial Court. His godfather andconsanguine relation was Pierre-Fran9oisDidot, "bookseller,quai des Augustins in Paris"and a scion of one of the largestand wealthiestpublishing dynasties of eighteenthcentury Paris. The centralestablishment of Firmin-Didot- a combined bookshop,typefoundary and printingfactory on the rue Dauphinenear the quaides Augustins- employedan averageof ninety-fiveworkers on a payrollof 1,200-1,800 "livres"a weekin 1790-91.The twofamily subsidiaries in Paris,Didot "ain', ruePavee Saint-Andr6,and Didot "jeune"rue du Hurepoix,employed respectively averages of 46 and 107.The family also ownedpaper mills at Essonne.19 Onemay doubt that Aristarque Didot's sole incomeduring the YearII washis salary as revolutionarycommissioner. In January,1796 and fromits creation,Didot gained employmentin the Ministryof GeneralPolice; by October,1797 he was a principal clerk.20From the Facultyof Law and clerkshipto an attorneyof the Parlementof Parisin 1787-90to the Ministryof GeneralPolice in 1797and probably beyond, Didot's was a bourgeoiscareer of governance(as had been his father's),a careermediated andexpanded by sectionaryleadership in 1793-YearII. Thiswas also the social trajectory of hundredsof "bourgeoislettrds" among the "sans-culotterie."21 The populistimagery of the laboring"sans-culotte" was invokedfrom prisonby enemies of the "sans-culotterie."Two artificedvoices speak for dozens from the Gravillierssection and hundreds throughout Paris during the YearII. SylvainCaubert, a memberof the section'scensitary elite, wasa constructionentrepreneur. In the words of his prisonautobiography: SylvainCaubert was born into that most valuable of classes,the People, the class destined most particularlyto reapthe benefitsof the Revolution;son of a worker,a long-time workerhimself, always living in the midstof 'sans-culottes'he is proudto havelearned from them the practiceof republicanvirtues. His F30 dossier reveals that in 1790-91he employed an averageof forty workers; from July through December, 1790 he paid 19,900 "livres"in wages. In 1789-92, Caubert was a captain in the district and section batallion. The revolutionarycommittee alleged that after the "journde"of 20 June, 1792 he exclaimed that had he commanded a unit at the Tuileries Palace, "he would have orderedvolley-fire into that scum."22Guillaume REVOLUTIONARYPARIS 79 Desmonceaux,constitutional monarchist ally of Caubertin the Gravilliers,also "sans- culottized"himself from prison, but his autobiographyhas resonances of veracity.Born at Bouquetotin Normandyin 1739,he wasthe son of a saddle-makerand a seamstress; the youngestof threechildren, he left Parisin 1758with thirty"livres" travel money: I arrivedon therue Basse Porte Saint-Denis at thehome of a relative,a descendantof myfirst cousin, who had come to Paris five or six years earlier; this relative was a building painterand, since I neededwork in orderto live,he got meinto a paintingshop.. .on the rueGrange-Bateliere. This was a classic patternof immigrationto Paris in the eighteenthcentury: in adolescenceand to the homeand employment connection of a relativealready installed in the metropolis,the patternof most immigrantswho became"bourgeois de Paris." Around1770, Desmonceaux gained the "maitrise"and established an atelier.In 1791, as a decorativebuilding painter he employedfive journeymen; in thatyear, he purchased the buildingof his atelier and residence(a nationalizedproperty) in the Marchd Saint-Martin.23 The ranksof Desmonceaux'senemies in the Gravillierssection contained a near- exacteconomic counterpart of almostthe same age, Francois-PierreBeaudouin. He presidedon the revolutionarycommittee during the winterof the YearH andhad been a long-timemember of the "Soci&t6populaire de la ruedu Vert-Bois."He andhis "sans- culotte"comrades imprisoned Desmonceaux, Caubert, and their political analogues. Also a masterdecorative painter, Beaudouin employed six skilled workersin 1790; in 1793he supervisedmuch of the section'swar production. He died of naturalcauses in 1795.We possess the inventoryof his "mobilier"in the largeapartment on the rue Phdlippeaux,one of the most affluentresidential streets of the Gravilliers:several largerooms facing a terracedgarden; a spaciouskitchen with two ovens; a studyalcove; andsuperb furnishings - walnutcabinets, inlaid hardwood floors, copperplumbing, crystalchandeliers and goblets, settings in porcelain,tables of oak andmarble.24 The wealthwas discreet, like that of much of the "sans-culotte"bourgeoisie. Whateconomic determinisms can explain for us thesetwo bitterly opposed political choices,that of Caubertand Desmonceaux, and that of Beaudouin?Parisian bourgeois madethese choices throughoutthe City in 1792-94.Yet Soboulevaded this central questionof Revolutionarypolitics in Paris.From the firstchapter of Les sans-culottes parisiens,he simplydenominated the sectionaryopponents of the "sans-culottes"as "moderates;"he dogmaticallyasserted, in a voidof economicevidence, that they were of highersocio-economic class thanthe "sans-culotterie"- "affluent" or "rich"classes, "middleand upperbourgeoisie" opposed by supposedly"petty bourgeois" artisans, tradesmenand employees allied with wagelaborers. Politically, he representedthem as mechanisticdialectical foils to "sans-culottes"and Jacobins.They receivedno prosopographicinvestigation, either en bloc or within individualsections. In sum, Sobouldescribed them by the populistrhetoric of their"sans-culotte" adversaries, by imagesof conservative,usurious, and exploitivewealth. Amongthe thousands of sectionaryand Municipal careers evoked in Lessans-culottes parisiens, one is outstandinglyeloquent of the maskingfunctions of ideological discoursein the YearII, the elusivemeanings of tradedenominations, the tautological encasementsof Soboul'smethods, and some genuinedynamics of sectionpower: the case of JosephBodson and his "sans-culotte"comrades in the Pont-Neufsection. On 21 March, 1794,Bodson and two revolutionarycommissioners were imprisonedby orderof the Committeeof GeneralSecurity as suspectof Cordelierintrigues and of "Hdbertism;"a third commissioner, Nicolas Cochois, was imprisonedon the same chargesin April. Thesefour belonged to the "sans-culotte"elite of the section.There 80 journal of social history had been denunciations of them by enemies within the section and in,prison. Bodson was particularlyvulnerable: he belonged to the "Societe populairea l'Evech6, a trans- sectionary club that had developed out of the Paris electoral assembly; in March he (or his youngerbrother) was "secrdtaire-greffier"of its publishedby-law which excluded ex-nobles and priests from membership and criticized the government for bridling sectionary popular societies; to the Executive Committees of the Convention, this was Cordelier and "H6bertist" agitation. In May, seventy-five citizens of the section petitionedthe Committees of General Security Public Safety to release these four men: Wehave seen themto be constantlypatriotic and incapable of havingparticipated in the Revolutionfor their own gain; since they were eitherborn, or raisedfrom childhood amongus, we haveknown them long beforethe Revolutionand therefore have been able to judge their conductand integrity... Chemin,haberdashery merchant, has lived for morethan thirty years in the section; [agedfifty-seven, married, three children]... Ardently,he declaredfor libertyfrom its very dawning;on 14July, 1789he racedto the InvalidesArsenal to gatherweapons; he participatedin the festivalof Chateau-Vieux,in the insurrectionsof 10 Augustand 31 May, and in all the events of the Revolution... He regularlyattends the popular societies... He hasalways been of patrioticprinciples, but since his personalityis rather harsh,he couldhave substituted coarseness for severityand his love for the Revolution couldhave degenerated into fanaticism(if one mayuse thatword); because he possesses only the mostcommon measure of intellectand no education,he couldhave committed errorswith the purestof intentions. Tarreau,jewelry worker [aged forty-seven, married, two children]hot-tempered and enthusiastic,he could have acted more from impulsethan from reflection;the joy he experiencesin civic festivalshas causedhim occasionallyto forgetrules of sobriety; he lackseducation and has only the RawCommon Sense of Nature,which he has used to defendliberty and express republican opinions, but in doingso he oftenevinces more stubbornessthan rigor....He could err innocently. Bodson,painter [aged twenty-nine] .. Althoughpoorly educated, his naturalintelligence hasgiven him meanswhich he utilizesto educatehimself and to defendliberty; but with a distrustfulpersonality, sensitive and easily offended,he can be excessivelypassionate in tenaciouslysupporting opinions that he believesare sound, all the more so because pride can cause him to overestimatehis capacities.. . Theirinvolvement in the Revolutionhas occupiedmuch of theirtime andhas caused themconsiderable loss; their familiesare experiencinga respectableneediness, if not misery,that increaseswith each day of their absence.25 Soboul read the petitioners' F7 dossiers, but apparently only through the lens of this petition. It was the literal basis for his interpretationof the repression and of these careers: Activesince 14July [1789],these men hadparticipated in all of the 'journees;'in 1791, with others, they had foundedthe 'Societe populairedes Hommes-Libres;'on 2-4 September,1793 they contributed to the 'regeneration'of the section.Chemin and Tarreau wereauthentic 'sans-culottes.' A haberdasherymerchant, without education, Chemin had a harshpersonality.. .Tarreau was a jewelryworker, also uneducated,possessing only 'theraw common sense of nature'.. Bodsonwas a painterby tradeand 'although poorly educated,his naturalintelligence gave him the meanswhich he utilizedto educatehimself andto defendliberty;' Bodson rose to the positionof assistant-judge[in the tribunalof the first 'arrondissment']...In them, the Committeeshad struckmen who were less partisansof Hebertthan devoted 'sans-culottes, but 'sans-culottes' more receptive to popular pressuresthan to Jacobininfluence. (pp. 851-52) To Soboul, these four men were socially modest artisans or tradesmen who had been thrust upwardby the "popularmasses" of the section because of their militancy. They existed historicallyonly as incarnationsof the "sans-culotterie"Their environment REVOLUTIONARYPARIS 81

was only the Revolutionnairesection and in the YearII. Soboul neglectedthe fact thatthis was the "quartier"of the Pont-Neuf,site throughoutthe eighteenthcentury of the most literate, skilled and affluent craftsmenof Paris - the mastersand journeymenof the "orfevrerie-bijouterie-horlogerie"(gold and silversmiths,jewellers, watch-makersand associated luxury trades). It encompassedthe Renaissance symmetriesof the Place Dauphine,the visual and social resplendenciesof the quai de l'Horloge,quai des Orfevres,and quai des Morfondus. Here, in distillation,was muchof Soboul'smethod in Les sans-culottesparisiens. To proberealities ignored or obscuredby thatmethod, let us returnto the collective petition.Its authorswere tryingto save theirfriends and comradesfrom prisonand possiblythe RevolutionaryTribunal. They succeeded: the fourwere released by order of the Committeeof GeneralSecurity in Juneand July. The rhetoricaltactics of the petitionwere cunning:Bodson, Cheminand Tarreauwere portrayedas industrious artisansand tradesmen, devoted fathers and husbands, Rousseauian "men of thepeople" - uneducatedand therefore guileless, but frank, loyal, courageous, and utterly innocent of opportunismor malice. Who were these militants?What were their careers? JosephBodson, thirtyin 1794,was of the "promotion"of August, 1792, as were most of the "sans-culotte"officials of the YearII: from that summer,deputy to the InsurrectionaryCommune and elector;national commissioner of the Communeand ProvisionalExecutive Council in the "d6partements"of Brittanyin Septemberand October;re-elected to the GeneralCouncil of the Communein 1793;in April,selected withfour others to formthe Commune'scommittee for correspondence with the 44,000 othermunicipalities; elected that same monthassistant-judge of an "arrondissement" tribunal.He resignedfrom the Communeto keephis judgeship,and during the winter of the YearII was againappointed by the governmentto an executivemission with the armynear Brest. 6 To Soboul, Bodsonand his fellowsappeared "more receptive to popularpressures than to Jacobininfluence." But Bodson'scareer since August, 1792had been essentiallyMunicipal and Jacobin. The other three were also of the Pont-Neufsleadership nucleus. They had been "eligibles"under the censitaryregime. Chemin had been a civil commissionerof the districtand section since 1789and elector from 1792. Tarreau was a civil commissioner beforehis election to the revolutionarycommittee, and Cochois had been a deputy to the InsurrectionaryCommune. Like the anthropologistwho was watchedthe tribal dancea hundredtimes but is still ruthlesslyuncertain of its meanings,I still ask:who were Bodson, Chemin,Tarreau and Cochois? Whenthe Committeeof GeneralSecurity interrogated Bodson in August,1794 they askedhis trade,and he answered:"formerly painter, now judge on a tribunal."When re-interrogateda month later and asked his tradebefore the Revolution,he answered: "painterand engraver."The simplicitywas calculatedlydeceptive, as was the image of modestlabor abandoned for civic service. JosephBodson was a mastergilding- painterand metal engraver "en taille douce"or "aburin." Burins were expensive steel cuttingand etching tools; their technique was the mostskilled and delicate in eighteenth centuryengraving. In 1790-91,a journeyman"graveur a burin"could earnfrom six to seven"livres" a day,or up to 2,200-2,500"livres" a year.Such a "sans-culotte"could affordample bread, meat and wine.27When re-arrestedas a terroristin the Spring of 1795,Bodson was an entrepreneurcontracted for painting, gilding and metal-carving at the Madeleineand othersites in westernParis. He belongedto at least the second generationof clan of bourgeoiscraftsmen of the Pont-Neuf;he andhis two brothers, bothprecision craftsmen, were natives of the "quartier"The eldest,Louis-Alexis (thirty- four in 1793),concurrently a revolutionaryand civil commissionerin the YearII, was a masterwatchmaker, jeweler and opticianwith boutiqueand ateliernear the Pont- 82 journal of social history au-Change. During the Years II and III, he was also a supervisor of manufacturing for the Agency of Powder and Saltpeter of the "d6partement"of Paris; Jean-Antoine Chaptal, scientist and Jacobin technocrat, lauded his professional competence in a letter to the Committees of Government.28Joseph Bodson received a similar letter of attestation from his colleagues on the tribunal. These "sans-culottes,"and their comrades, were endowed with far more than raw intelligence and Rousseauiancommon sense. Jean-CharlesChemin, haberdasheryand hosiery merchant, was hardly a precarious tradesman. Around 1789, he had established his eldest son (who was only twenty- seven in 1793)as printerand bookdealeron the rue Glatignyin the adjacentCit6 section. This was one of the most capital-intensive trades of the Parisian economy. Chemin "fils"was official printer of the Cite section and the electoral assembly of Paris, both lucrativecommissions. He was also editor-publisherof the Journal des inventionsdans les arts et metiers and author-publisherof several republicantracts. From prison, Jean- Charles Chemin wrote to the Committees of Government in the proud, indignant language of a bourgeois patriarch: I proclaim,and I call uponall patriotswho knowme to attestthat since 1789all of my time has been absolutelydevoted to publicservice; I havefigured in all the daysof the Revolution...I sent one of my sons to the Vend6e,where he died on the field of battle. I haveanother whose fortunateliterary ventures on the subjectof publiceducation have wonhim the plaudits and encouragements of the NationalConvention and the Commune of Paris.Should the fatherwho gave such sons to the Statebe suspectedof being the enemyof that State?29 Pierre Tarreau, simple jewel worker according to the petition, was a patented gemcutter and mounter with boutique, atelier and residence on the prestigious rue Saint-Louis. He worked principally on commission and through subcontractingwith craft-masters.30Nicolas Cochois, the last of our quartet, was twenty-nine in the Year II and a native of the section. He was a master rugmaker and merchant who in 1790 employed six weavers, to whom he paid some six hundred "livres"a month in wages, about 7,000 a year.31 The craftingand sale of precious metals, gems, timepieces and precision instruments were the dominant activities within the Pont-Neuf "quartier"during the eighteenth century. This craftsmanship had been the most privileged, lucrative, and protected in Old Regime France. The guild of the "orfevrerie-bijouterie-horlogerie"was alive juridically until June, 1791and socially long after the Le Chapelier Law. It encouraged nepotism, the stabilityand continuityof productionthrough its transmissionfrom father to son. The sons of masters were exempted from the formal periods of apprenticeship and journeymanship (six and three years) and had only to produce the "chefd'oeuvre" and the caution money of 1,000 "livres"to receive certificationas masters. The structure of the craft was in fact nepotistic, even dynastic, within extended families. In 1793-Year II, there were more than six hundred masters and journeymen of the "orfevrerie- bijouterie-horlogerie"and associated trades in the Pont-Neuf. They were sophisticated and cosmopolitan artisans, for they had produced directly for a clientele that encompassedevery class from the court, the high episcopacy,and the nobility to artisans and tradesmen.32 Most of the "sans-culotte"personnel of the section were of the guild, principally young or middle-aged masters who were at least of the second or third generation in craft families; this included nine of the twelve revolutionarycommissioners of the Year II. Their political opponents were barristers and solicitors, notaries, clerks, bureaucratsof the Old Regime and the Revolution, and, by about 40 percent, masters of the guild, most of them older and more commercially successful than their "sans- REVOLUTIONARY PARIS 83 culotte"rivals (although the differenceswere those of gradations,not distinct economic class.) When imprisoningthese latteras counter-revolutionaries,the "sans-culottes" of the Pont-Neufwere obliged to adoptclever social hypocrisies - notably,accusations of parasiticalwealth and of workingfor nobles who had subsequentlyemigrated - just as they wereobliged to resortto rhetoricalcontrivances in theirself-presentations to the City and State.33 The Bourgeois Core of the "Sans-culotterie." '"Anyattempt to fix a rigid systemof classificationupon an essentiallyfluid social order is arbitrary:"Soboul acknowledgedthis fact in partII, p. 441. But he then proceeded,mostly from the F7 dossiersand administrative records, to employa rigid andarbitrary classification in his statisticaldescriptions of assemblyofficers and civil and revolutionarycommissioners (the majorityof "sans-culotte"officials) and in characterizingindividual militants throughout parts I and III. Soboul socially inventoried454 revolutionarycommissioners of the YearII (pp. 444-46): 45.3 percent were artisans, whom he enumeratedby trades (weavers, shoemakers,tanners, cabinetmakers, tailors, stonemasons,etc.); 18.5 percentwere tradesmenor merchants;10.5 percent were of the liberalprofessions (including clerical employees);9.9 percentwere actualor formerdomestic servantsor wage laborers (includingjourneymen); only 2.8 percentwere manufacturers,entrepreneurs or em- ployingmasters. I haveinventoried some 550 revolutionarycommissioners: about 45 percentwere in sectorsof production;a near-majorityof these were manufacturers, entrepreneursand employing masters, as revealedin the F30 dossiersand other socio- economicdocuments. Civil commissioners- sixteen per section and who were not salarieduntil April, 1794 - were a politically and administrativelyvery important forcethat Soboul dismissed as being of minorsignificance in the YearII. He socially inventoried343 of them as follows: 34.9 percentwere artisans;23.6 percentwere tradesmenor merchants;22.8 percentwere retired artisans or shopkeepers(described as a "categoryof small rentiers"or "thesesmall pensioners,these modestrentiers"); 12.2 percent were of the liberal professions;a miniscule 2.3 percentwere active manufacturers,entrepreneurs, or employing masters (pp. 442-44). In reality, the proportionof substantial"patrons" of enterprisewas very high among the civil commissionersof 1793-YearII, approaching65 percentwithin sectorsof production and commerce.Many of them were indeed retiredin the YearII, havingconsigned managementof theirenterprises to youngerbrothers, sons, or sons-in-law.They were often"sans-culotte" patriarchs, possessed of considerablesocial and moral power. Bonds andauthorities of familywere fundamental within communities and economies of late eighteenthcentury Paris. For this reasonalone, neithercivil commissionersnor many of the revolutionarycommissioners should be perceivedas a statisticalcollection of discreteindividuals, as did Soboul. ThroughoutLes sans-culottesparisiens, Soboulascribed economic class to simple tradedenominations. This cannotbe done, unless one wishes to soar into altitudes of non-meaningin social history of the eighteenthcentury. "Tailor" could mean GuillaumeTesseyre, a revolutionarycommissioner of the Louvresection who worked with his wife and doubled,to makeends meet, as "portier-concierge"of his building on the rue des Pretres Saint-Germain.34It could mean Jean Lechenard,frequent presidentof the Bon-Conseilsection in 1793-YearII and a deputyto the Commune, who owned a garmentfactory employing some forty workers.35"Shoemaker" could meana journeymanat three"livres" per diem.36It could also meanPhilippe Saunier, civil commissionerof the Gravillierssection and owner of a factoryemploying twenty shoemakers.37"Carpenter" could meana journeymanat four "livres"per diem.38Or 84 journal of social history it could mean Jean Deveze, a "sans-culotte"leader of the Faubourg-du-Roulesection with an averagework-force of twenty-seven in 1790-91.39"Limonadier" (drink-vendor) suggesteda classic small trade of the street; this could indeed describe the "sans-culotte" Delamarre,with a hole-like estaminet in the "Halles."40It could also describe the "sans- culotte" Pierre Chrdtien, owner of a sumptuous and fashionable establishment - a large caf6 with reading and smoking rooms - on the rue Neuve Saint-Marc (which in 1796was a favoriteopen political rendezvousfor membersof the allegedly clandestine Conspiracy of the Equals).41 Soboul's central social definition of the "sans-culotterie,"and the definition from which he attemptedto explain sectionary politics in 1793-YearII, may be summarized as follows: the "sans-culotterie"was essentially a petty bourgeois coalition of small- scale master artisans, small-scale tradesmen, salaried employees and wage laborers. "Petty bourgeois" is the decisive, operative component of the definition. Wemust affirm that the revolutionaryvanguard of the Parisian"sans-culotterie" was not composedof a factoryproletariat, but rather of a coalitionof smallmasters and journeymen workingand living with them. (p. 451) Popularand sectionary societies were dominated by menof the artisanand shopkeeper petty bourgeoisie.. .(p. 644). Artisansand shopkeepersformed the cadresof the "sans-culotterie"and exerciseda decisive ideologicalinfluence over theirjourneymen and clerks. (p. 469) In sequel to Les sans-culottes parisiens, George Rudd, Kare T6nnesson, Gwyn A. Williams, R.B. Rose, and the authors of dozens of general histories of the Revolution have loyally concurredin describing the "sans-culotterie"as essentially petty bourgeois. So greathas been Soboul'sauthority in this regardthat explicitly anti-Marxianhistorians such as Francois Furet and Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret have likewise accepted this definition.42 "Petty bourgeois:" Soboul used this notion causally, to explain the social politics of the "sans-culotterie:"its attackson large-scale propertiedenterprises and "capitalist" wealth in general; its advocacy of state regulationof commodity prices and subsistence provisioning, public assistance for the indigent, graduatedtaxation, and state-enforced limits on private ownership of real property. Soboul insisted that the "sans-culotterie" was consciously threatened by "greatcapitalist concentration,"both commercial and industrial. Becausethe "sans-culottes"produced their goods for immediatemarkets, they believed thatownership of propertyshould be basedupon personal labor, and their ideal society was a society of small owners,each manpossessing his own field, his own workshop, or his own store.. .The economicstructure based upon small independentproducers favoredthe parcelling of landand the scatteringof property:it excludedsocial cooperation and concentrationof the meansof production.(p. 503) Thetriumph of the "sans-culotterie"during the summerof 1793led to the organization of the Terror,which completedthe destructionof the old social order. The upper bourgeoisieof the Old Regime,based on commercialcapital and attached,in certain ways,to the old social and politicalorder of the feudalaristocracy, was not spared.In the YearH, the artisanand shopkeeper"sans-culotterie," its leadingmembers recruited from among small independentproducers (a fact provenby analysisof the Parisian revolutionarycommittees), formed the mosteffective weapon in the struggleto destroy outmodedforms of productionand the social relationsfounded upon them. Thermidor was, in fact, the signalfor an economicas well as a politicalreaction; for by thattime, the Terrorhad cleared the wayfor the introductionof new relationshipsof production. In the capitalistsociety born of the Revolution,industry was destinedto dominate commerce:commercial capital, against which the "sans-culotterie"had fought so bitterly in the YearII, wouldno longerhave an independentexistence; henceforth, it wouldbe REVOLUTIONARYPARIS 85

subordinatedto the sole productiveform of capital- industrialcapital. As for the "sans- culottes"themselves, economic evolution would divide their ranks. Among the smalland middlingproducer-merchants who had providedcadres for the popularmovement in 1793-94,some would succeed and become industrial capitalists, others would be eliminated to swell the ranksof wage laborers.(pp. 1034-35) Werethese indeed their personal destinies? Soboul ventured the aboveaffirmations; the workis not an economicstudy of Paris,nor did he researchthe familyand business historiesof ex-"sans-culottes"and theirprogeny in the nineteenthcentury metropolis. As these passages disclose, Les sans-culottes parisiens was shaped by teleological reasoning.The teleology,and its non sequiturs,may be summarizedas follows. In RevolutionaryParis, the scale of employmentand production by masterartisans was small by nineteenthand twentiethcentury industrialstandards, and by those of embryonicand dispersed"grandes manufactures" at the close of the Old Regime. Therefore,the aggregateof theseartisan producers must be definedas "pettybourgeois7 Theywere doomed, by inexorabledialectics of economicdevelopment, to be supplanted by industrialconcentration in the nineteenthcentury; their politicaleconomy was thereforedefensive-aggressive and rearguard. Soboul'sdefinition of masterartisans within Parisian society and the "sans-culotterie" derivedfrom his conceptionof the Frencheconomy in the nineteenthand twentieth centuries. That conception has been negated by recent economic research.43 Teleological,Soboul's perspective on artisanproduction in latereighteenth century Pariswas also anachronistic. Let us gauge the concept"petty bourgeois" for its validityin describingParisian artisanenterprises of the Revolutionaryera. Letus do so empirically- outsidesterile academictheorizing about economic class - by examiningthe social composition of a civil committee(Faubourg-Montmartre section) and a revolutionarycommittee (Gravillierssection) during the YearII, and from withinthe productiveeconomies of their respective"quartiers." Of the fifteencivil commissionersin service in the Faubourg-Montmartresection at theend of the YearII (tableI), eightwere active in production(and the threerentiers may have been retiredartisans). One, Pierre Lancelin,was a token and co-opted proletarianwho was also investedwith the dangerousoffice of hoardingcommissioner. Five wereheads of enterprise:Godefert, with 24 workers;Presle, with 22; Massonet, with 20; Menage,with 10; and Lecoeur,with 9. Withinthe scales of enterprisein the section(table II) these five wereat medianor higherranges of employingcapital. They were solidly implantedbourgeois. Within the generalsocial structureof the "quartier,"they were an economic aristocracy. In the YearII, thepopulation of the sectionwas 10,104,of whom 1,567(15.5 percent) wereofficially indigent and subsistingon publicrelief. In 1791,there were only 687 citizensqualified and registeredto vote in the section, only 687 residentadult males payingthe very modesttax of the censitaryregime. Even retaining the figureof 10,104 as totalpopulation (for the City'sresident population declined considerably between 1791and 1794),this was one of the lowestpercentages of voterswithin total population amongall Parissections. These are statistics of poverty.Eighty-one heads of enterprise in 1790-92employed at wage approximately1,200 workers(most of whom lived in the section);this figuremust be juxtaposedto the 1,567 indigent.These are statistics of power. This regionwas fully incorporatedwith Parisonly in 1787-88by the new customs wall and integratedwith the metropolisonly duringthe Revolution.During the last quarterof the century,there were two Faubourgs-Montmartretensely co-existing within this space. One was semiruralwith farms,pastures and stock pens, traversedby the Table 1 00 CIVIL COMMISSIONERSOF THE FAUBOURG-MONTMARTRESECTION, YEAR II

1 = name; 2 = age in 1793; 3 = trade or profession (average number of workers in 1790-92); 4 = birthplace; 5 = years of residence in the section; 6 = date of election to the committee; 7 = previous or concurrent section offices.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

J.-B. Bien-Aim6 54 master jeweler Dieppe 10 1794 welfare commissioner (Seine-Inf6rieure) J.-B. Chalamel 40 wholesale merchant Brignieres 5 1793 welfare commissioner (Rh6ne-et-Loire) J.-B. Godefert 50 master sawyer (24) Bure (Aube) 31 1789 I.-J. Hum6ry 48 tailor Orldans (Loiret) 8 1794 M-F. Humet 44 retired Paris 12 1789 haberdashery merchant P. Lancelin 33 day laborer Evreux (Eure) 3 1794 hoarding commissioner J.-L. Landrin 64 rentier Paris 44 1791 welfare commissioner L.-D. Lecamus 79 retired architect Paris 40 1792 M. Lecoeur 56 master Argentan (Orne) 30 1789 wheelwright (9) P. Massonet 31 paper manufacturer Remiremont 5 1794 company captain (20) (Vosges) N.-R. Menage 45 master building painter (10) Bernay (Eure) 4 1793 welfare commissioner 0 C.-G. Naudin 53 rentier Beaumont 5 1794 C.-J. Presle 70 master building Paris 20 1790 welfare commissioner painter (22) C. Sandras 34 restauranteur Paris 5 1794 0 P.-J. Saulnier 52 rentier Paris 52 1790 0..o

SOURCE: A,N. Fib II Seine, 18. _. Table II 0 HIERARCHIESOF PRODUCTIONAND EMPLOYMENTIN THE "FAUBOURGMONTMARTRE," 1790-92 z (The rubriques1-4, etc. contain the numberof employerswhose averagework-forces in 1790-92were with those ranges.)

1-4 5-9 10-14 15-24 25-39 40-59 60-79 80-99 100+ general building trades: 12 16 16 9 7 3 1 1 (joinors, carpenters,metal-crafters and forgers, locksmiths,roofer, pavers, stone-masons,landscapers, window-makers,wheelwrights, plumbers and coppersmiths) Luxury artisanate: 1 2 7 3 (painter-gilders,saddle and carriagemakers, sculptors, fancy-turners,glazier-varnishers) paper manufacturing: haulage and transport: 1 TOTAL fabric manufacturing: 1 81

Source:A.N. F30 138. 88 journalof social history northernsewer and its effluvia, morallyconditioned by proximityto the notorious "guingettes"of the Porcherons,the PetitePologne, and La NouvelleFrance, intensely plebeianand poverty-stricken.The other Faubourg-Montmartrewas a zone of real estate speculationand building construction,a prime zone of new "hotels"and residentialedifices for the wealthyof the innerCity who were evacuatingfrom the spatialconstrictions and social promiscuitiesof the "vieuxquartiers." Slowed by the generaleconomic contractionof 1789-95,this conquestof the Faubourgthrough investmentand construction was resumed and accelerated by parvenusof the Directory, Consulateand Empire. For the building contractorsand master craftsmenwho financiallysurvived the hardyears of the mid-1790s,this was a paradisiacalregion at the end of the eighteenthcentury and across most of the nineteenth.They were agentsand profiteers of the "quartier's"transformation. They could select, at minimal wage,from a massivelabor reserve, most of it concentratedin the scabrousenclave of theBoule-Rouge, a warrenof old buildingsand alley-ways between the rueMontyon andthe ruedu Faubourg-Montmartre.Within their socio-economic environment, these "maitres"were no "pettybourgeoisie.'44 By size andpopulation (24,774 at the end of 1794),the Gravillierswas the dominant sectionwithin the principalmanufacturing zone of late eighteenthcentury Paris: the centerof the RightBank, fromthe Rampartsto the Riveralong the axes of the rues Saint-Denis,Saint-Martin and Temple-Sainte-Avoye. It contained the highestnumber of "patrons"of production,368 (tableIII), of any section. Morethan 5000 workers, from skilledjourneymen to a majorityof wage or piece-ratelaborers, lived in this space;the 368 "patrons"directly employed almost 4000 of them (tableIII). In the most"industrial" zone of lateeighteenth century Paris only twenty-four "patrons" among 368 employedmore than forty salariedworkers, and only five employedmore than one hundred;this includedeven the comparativelylabor-intensive sectors of textile andgarment production. Many artisan enterprises of the Gravillierssection combined severalskills and commonly enjoyed the versatilityof triplemarkets: direct production for clientsat retail;specialized work on commissionfor contractors;and production for sale to wholesalemerchants and merchandizingor exportof the commoditiesby them. Familycapital and labor were often conjoined,as exemplifiedby the Scharf brothers.During the 1760sand 1770s, the three of themhad immigrated to theGravilliers en echelon from the village of Metzereche(Moselle). By 1791,they were master carpentersor joiners in therue Ph6lippeaux and the carre Saint-Martin. Their combined laborforces totalled thirty, within the highestfive percenton the scale of the building trades,and they themslevesworked.45 These enterpriseswere tenacious;relatively few of them appear in bankruptcyproceedings from the Directorythrough the Empire.46 The passagefrom the firstrevolutionary committee to the second,in October1793, meantenhanced representation of the"quartier's" central socio-economic elite, masters of production,and an enhancedpresence of headsof enterpriseamong them (table IV). Eleven of the fourteen commissionerswho served during the Year II - commissionerselected to enforcethe Law of Suspectsand the Terror - wereproducers of commodities;six were wage-paying"patrons" and at medianor higherlevels on the scales of enterpriseof their trades (tablesIII-IV). As producersand often as purchasersof real propertyor consumersof durablegoods (as with the previously cited"moblier" of F.-P.Beaudouin), these men weresolid bourgeoiswithin the social hierarchiesof the Gravilliers.They certainlywore the tricolor"cocarde" and they probablywore the redPhyrgian cap whileon duty.But one maydoubt that Beaudouin, Cruzy,Lachauss6e and their colleagues habitually donned wooden clogs and rough cut baggy trousersor traileda pike. Table III HIERARCHIESOF PRODUCTIONAND EMPLOYMENTIN THE 0 "GRAVILLIERS"SECTION, 1790-92 > (The rubriques1-4, etc., containthe numberof employerswhose averagework-forces in 1790-92were withinthose ranges;the percentageunder each number,reading across, is of the total numberof employerswithin that sector of production;the percentagesat the bottomof the table are of the numberof employersby each rubricwithin the total of 368.)

1-4 5-9 10-14 15-24 25-39 40-59 60-79 80-99 100+ Total general buildingtrades: 28 56 31 16 6 5 0 0 0 (142) 19.7% 39.4% 21.8% 11.2% 4.2% 3.9% luxurycrafts: 38 51 23 17 7 1 2 0 0 (139) 27.3% 36.6% 16.5% 12.2% 5% .7% 1.4% garment,fabric and accessories: 4 19 14 14 9 5 1 3 3 (72) 5.5% 26.3% 19.4% 19.4% 12.5% 6.9% 1.3% 4.1% 4.1% other: 4 1 2 4 1 0 1 2 (15) 26.6% 6.6% 13.3% 26.6% 6.6% 6.6%13. 3% Totals: 70 130 69 49 26 12 3 4 5 368 19.2% 35.3% 18.7% 13.3% 7% 3.2% 0.8% 1% 1.3%

Source:A.N. F30 133, 134, 135.

00 ".0 0

Table IV REVOLUTIONARY COMMISSIONERS OF THE GRVILLIERS SECTION, 1793-YEAR II

1 = name; 2 = age in 1793; 3 = trade or profession (average number of workers in 1790-92); 4 = birthplace; 5 = year of immigration to Paris (age at arrival); 6 = previous section offices (concurrent offices).

1 2 3 4 5 6

First Committee (April-September 1793) Beurlier Butot government clerk J.-B. David master jewel cutter L. Derouvrois 53 smelter-caster Paris P. Egasse 40 wine merchant Bercheres 1766 (13) elector, deputy (Eure-et-Loire) Insurrectionary Commune J.-C. Lambert 33 gauze-maker Tours (Indre-et-Loire) G.-P. Leblanc 45 former govt. clerk Someille (Meuse) 1789 (41) P. Mermillod 34 master fancy-turner (72) Villars (Jura) 1782 (23) treasurer of the section A. Peillon clerk in municipality assessor o N. Petillon 49 public writer Provins 1782 (38) (Seine-et-Marne) N. Petit 35 fan and parasol maker (2) Paris elector o G. Truchon 49 barrister Vincelles 1759 cs (Yonne) (15) elector, deputy e_. Insurrectionary Commune o 0 SecondCommittee (Year II) P.-F. Aubin sculptor 0C C. Barbot 42 haberdashery merchant elector z F.-P. Beaudoin 50 master decorative painter (6) Paris civil commissioner (concurrent) T. Boursault 47 schoolmaster Brie-sur-Marne 1763 (17) assessor to justice of (Marne) the peace J.-M. Bruyas 40 silk-weaver Lyons 1782 (29) (Rhone-et-Loire) J.-B. Cazenave 34 surgeon-apothecary Lus 1779 (21) (Haute-Pyrenees) J. Cruzy 38 master fabric painter (13) Lyon 1773 (18) (Rhone-et-Loire) J.-B. Duhamel fanmaker elector P.-M. Dusaussois 52 paper manufacturer (24) Paris elector J. Epellet 37 master metal-carver and Paris elector chaser J.-C. Haguenier master fancy-turner (6) P. Houdemard 43 master scabbard maker Paris Lachaussee master enameller (15) E. Planson 34 master jeweler (5) Le Puy 1770 (11) (Haute-Sa6ne)

Source:A.N., F7* 2486, registerof the revolutionarycommittee, 1793-Year II; Archivesd6partementales de la Seine, 3 AZ 260; A.N., F7 4795, register of cartes de sarte; F30 133, 134, 135; individual dossiers of F7; and a variety of other sources. 92 journalof social history Letus examinethis committee more closely. It wasrestaffed by the generalassembly of the sectionin late Septemberand early October1793, as weremost revolutionary committees. Contraryto Soboul's general schema (pp. 177-241)this was no "regeneration"of authorityby the "popularmasses" of the section. The incumbent membersof the firstcommittee were not purged: they were replaced by a sophisticated processof voluntarywithdrawal and co-optation;this processwas controlledby the enduring"sans-culotte" elite of the generalassembly and the Societepopulaire de la rue du Vert-Bois(of which most commissionersof the first and secondcommittees weremembers). In the wordsof the committee'sregister, the incumbentswere replaced "somefor reasonsof weakness"(reluctance or unsuitabilityto executethe hard mandates of the Lawof Suspects),and others"because they had to choose betweenthis and other[salaried] offices." Most of the replacedcommissioners either moved laterally intoother sectionary or Municipaloffices or upwardinto government positions.47 The newcommissioners, armed with the legislationof the Terror,were chosen to preserve both "sans-culotte"rule and the bourgeoisintegrity of the "quartier."They became revolutionarycommissioners of the YearII by choice, militancy,and, one suspects for the "patrons"among them, becauseof their socio-professionalstatus. The Gravillierssection harbored a large,volatile mass of plebeians.As the "cartes de sdrete"reveal, the majorityof themwere raw provincial immigrants, illiterate and transientwithin the City and its labor markets.Here, and throughoutParis, one of the primarytasks of revolutionarycommissioners was policing, disciplining,and regimentingthis mass. This task requiredmen of robustphysical and emotional constitution.And it requiredknowledge of theplebeian classes, a knowledgepossessed in pre-eminenceby masterartisans. The socialpower of masterartisans - in the Faubourg-Montmarte,Gravilliers and Pont-Neufsections and throughout most of Paris- wasthe powerto commandlabor. They had no serious rivals for this power. Manufacturersand merchantswhose workforcesexceeded one hundred,and who weremostly isolated and fragile summits of successwithin the artisanate,were few anddispersed. To characterize master artisans as pettybourgeois is to misapprehendboth the meaningof bourgeoisand the realities of politicaleconomy in the Revolutionarymetropolis. These men and theirfamilies werethe dynamic,expanding core of the Parisianbourgeoisie. During the eighteenth andnineteenth centuries a probablemajority of theprofessionally lettered and governing classesof urbanFrance emerged, at removesof one to threegenerations, from families of the master-merchantartisanate.48 Bourgeois:in late eighteenthcentury Paris that realityembraced not only capital andcommand of labor.It signifiedadditional exclusivities and potencies: literacy, skills in recordingand administering;abilities to establishand enforcerules of conduct, to punish.These were also potenciesof the Parisianmaster artisanate. Here again, one mustavoid anachronistic conceptions of social class, for these artisanbourgeois did not havethe characteristicsof a modernurban bourgeoisie, notably one remote from labor and relatively insulatedfrom violence, narrowlyspecialized within professionsor enclosed in managerialsatrapies, acting politically only through intermediaries,and almost obsessed with economic security, private life, and consumption.Nor didthey share the attributesof the mercantile,rentier and stipendiary bourgeoisieof Old RegimeParis. They were virile, physically,socially and politically. Theyventured both skills andcapital, assumed governing responsibilities in sections, the Municipality,and the administrationof the Terror,and frequently gave themselves or their sons and brothersto the blood-drenchedbattlefields of the Republic,from the Vend6eto the Midi, the Alps, the Rhine and Flanders. Withinthis sensuousand experientialcontext, let us furtherexplore the concept REVOLUTIONARYPARIS 93

of "sans-culotte,"by posingthe followingproblem: were therecongruences between thepredominantly bourgeois composition of the "sans-culotte"cadre, the manifestself- consciousnessof the "sans-culotterie,"and its combativeideology?

The "Sans-culotterie:" Self-Consciousness and Ideology Whatwas a "sans-culotte?"An insolentand subversive question during the YearII, it remainsone of the most perplexingfor modernhistorians of the Revolution.In languageand fact, "sans-culotte"was inventedin Paris.49Its primaryreference was to socialappearance: the trousersof the laboringclasses as againstthe tightbreeches ("culottes")of the affluent.From 1792, revolutionary publicists and leaders continually adjustedits meaningfor propaganda- self-presentations,mobilizations, exclusions andrepressions. Soboul gave a pluralityof contemporarydefinitions of "sans-culotte" - moral,political and social - bothpositive and negative by oppositions(pp. 408-33). He concludedthe following:the "sans-culotterie"did not, and could not, possess a centralsocial self-definition, much less a "classconsciousness;" the only positive general elementof its social ideologywas consumerism- "les subsistances,"or the demand for stateprovisioning of vital commoditiesat controlledprices. The'sans-culotterie' asserted its identityonly by oppositionto aristocracy,wealth and commerce:these antagonisms reflected both the vagueness of socialfrontiers within the oldThird Estate and the impossibility of definingthe 'sans-culotterie' as a socialclass. It differentiateditself only by referenceto thearistocracy. As a coalitionof disparate socialgroups, it wasundermined by internalcontradictions. (p. 427) The'sans-culottes' were, however, not genuinely class conscious. Divided into different socialcategories, sometimes with conflicting aims, it wasimpossible for them to constitute a class;their unity was only negative... According to popularmentality, a 'sans-culotte' couldnot be defined by social characteristics alone: a counter-revolutionaryworker could notbe a genuine'sans-culotte;' a patriotic and republican bourgeois was readily accepted as one. Thesocial definition is renderedprecise by a politicaldefinition; one cannot existwithout the other.(p. 431) Price-controlson basiccommodities were demanded with all themore insistence by themilitants because they were subjected topressure in theirown sections, not only from wage-earners,but also from the thousands of destituteParisians, tormented by hunger. Hunger- anessential factor of all popularmovements - wasthe cement which held togetherthe artisan, the shopkeeper,and the workman...(p. 454) Theconnotations of "sans-culotte"were indeed moral and political, for they signified patrioticand republicanbehavior (much of it speech-actions)."Subsistences" were indeeda consensualdemand in the politics of the "sans-culotterie."But contraryto Soboul'saffirmations, "sans-culotte" did possessa centralsocial meaning. Across the spectrumof definitionsin 1792-94,one meaningtraversed most attributesand uses: the "sans-culotte"performed useful, productivelabor - economic, civic, or intellectual.50Through social and political necessitiesin JacobinParis, the "sans- culotte"as worker-fabricatorwas often described as "poor;"this usually meant someone livinghonestly at subsistencelevels fromwageearning, and this was Soboul'sfavored description.But the axial social meaningwas productiveutility, not economicclass. Masters and entrepreneursof commodity production;inventors of techniques; administrativeservants of the Republicanstate; purveyorsof civicly useful ideas, discourseand knowledge:they also belongedto this axial meaning.51The opposites of thismeaning of "sans-culotte"were less socialclasses of wealth,than social existences of usury, parasitism,or indolence. "Aristocratie"and "gueuserie"(mendicancy, vagabondageand pilferage)defined those existences. Thisdefinition of "sans-culotte"was essentially bourgeois, by its supremevaluation of productivityand its articulation(the authorship of mostdocuments). It wasmandated 94 journal of social history to embrace plebeians - but as workers, not as a migratory begging, scavenging and hustling populace. For the majority of plebeians, labor at wage or piece-rate was occasional and a miserable, attritional necessity that enabled consumption and pleasures; many of them regarded it as an incarceration. They did not define their own worth in this exclusive manner. Nor did traditionalelites of wealth (noble, clerical or bourgeois) who were predominantlyconcerned with honors and display, refinements of titles and possessions. "Sans-culotte"as producerencompassed, in valuation,virtually all groups of the Parisian bourgeoisie that fabricated commodities of general utility and adjunctively merchandizedthem. As with the abstractuniversalism of democratic citizenship, the definition erased, in ideology, the socially necessary but politically dangerous boundaries between masters who purchased and supervised labor and workers who sold their labor. Common language of the eighteenth century and much of the nineteenth conveyed an analogously wide social and ideological prehension in the notion of "industry:" 'Industry:'this word means two things; either simple manual labor, or inventionsof intellect in the formof machinesuseful to the arts and trades;'industry' comprises sometimes one, sometimesthe otherof these two things,and often combines the two. It standsfor the cultivationof the land, manufacturing,and crafts; it animatesall vital activitiesand propagatesabundance and life everywhere...52 As producerof social utility, one could be "sans-culotte."Active allegiance or service to populist republicanism were required to realize that potential. "Sans-culotte"also comportedchoice: this reality was confirmed by the large presence of the economically successful and even affluent, includingnumerous "grands patrons" of production,among the leadership of the "sans-culotterie."One could "sans-culotiser."A crafted and malleable term, in Jacobin Paris "sans-culotte"was intended to have those functional meanings. Anyoneuseless to societyis detrimentalto it. Eachindividual should contribute to public prosperityby the meanswith whichnature has endowedhim. Workis a socialduty, and societytherefore must exact the performanceof thatduty. (La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt in the ConstituentAssembly, May, 1790, R6impression de lAncienMoniteur, IV, 497-98). The most commonsource of crime is need; and need is the child of idleness. The systemof penalities[in the criminallaw] thereforemust be basedprincipally on labor. ("Rapportsur le projetdu CodePenal" May, 1791, in Oeuvresde MichelLepeletier Saint- Fargeau,Brussels, 1826,p. 105). Strength,dexterity and industriousness are the 'naturalproperty' of humanbeings; they formthe true naturalbasis for civil society.. .The first purposeof civil society should be the perfectingof industry.(Francois Chabot, "Discours...sur les financesde la Republic,"Paris, 1793,pp. 10-11.Brit. Mus. F. 184 21). Today,the problem of the generalwelfare may be expressedas follows:Everyone must workand respectthemselves and each other.(Louis-Antoine Saint-Just, Fragments sur les institutionsrepublicaines, ed. R. Mandrou,Paris, 1963,p. 150) Anyonehenceforth convicted [by the RevolutionaryTribunal] of publiclycomplaining aboutthe Revolutionwho lives in idleness,["vivait sans rien faire"]and is neitheraged overseventy nor invalid,will be departedto Guyana.(Article XV, Lawof 26 germinal YearII, Moniteur,XX, 225). Naturehas imposedon everyonethe obligationto work. To refusethat obligation is a crime. (GracchusBabeuf, Article III, "Analysede la Doctrinede Babeuf... Paris, 1796,A.N. W3 563). From La Rochefoucauld-Liancourtof the first revolutionarygeneration to Gracchus Babeuf, of the last, there was continuity in the social and civic imperativeof productive work. This imperative was a central tenet of Jacobin ideology and political economy in 1793-YearII, for productivitywas crucial to a programof both economic development REVOLUTIONARYPARIS 95

anddistributive social justice in a non-mechanicalcivilization whose resourceswere humanand animal energy. The Jacobin State, with which the Parisian"sans-culotterie" was thoroughlyimbricated, began a legislativeredefining of "citizen"as producerby use of the criminal sanction, among several instrumentalities.In Jacobinpolity, productiveutility distinguished a "sans-culotte"(or a citizen)from an "aristocrat;"it also distinguishedhim fromvagabonds, "gens sans aveux,"and "gueux"- the other outlawedpariahs of RepublicanFrance, tens of thousandsof whomswarmed in Paris. The rootdefinition of "sans-culotte"as producerwas, in Montagnardlegislation and "sans-culotte"politics, a double-edgedblade that was swung both upwardsand downwardsin the social stratificationof Paris. Soboul describedonly upwardcuts of thatblade, although he didnot track them across the incidence of Terror.He neglected to discuss,perhaps for ideologicalreasons, the massiveand consequential downward cuts into the plebeianclasses.53 Thisdefinition isolated for coercionor repressionthe indolentof unearnedincome or inheritedwealth (if theydid notdevote full personallabors to the Republic):nobles; monasticclergy; rentiers; financiers; wholesale merchants; speculators; and former magistratesof the Old Regime who had accumulatedcapital from offices. These classicallyusurious and sumptuarygroups had formeda dominantportion of the goveringelite of Old RegimeParis, and a large segmentof the censitaryoligarchy of 1789-92.Their municipal power was broken through the insurrectionof 10August, 1792.But in 1793they, with social dependents and allies, formed a substantialproportion of the local adversariesto Jacobinsand "sans-culottes"until the Terrormandated by the NationalConvention in the Law of Suspectsof 17 September,1793. Contraryto Soboul'sinsistence, the sectionaryascendency of the "sans-culotterie" in 1793-94was not a radicalsocial devolutionof power.It was largelya displacement of powerfrom non-producing bourgeois to mastersof productionand theirallies of intellectualand administrativelabor. The beginningsof the displacementwere not in mid-1793,as Soboulasserted, but in August-September,1792. (Les sans-culottes parisienscommenced abruptly, with no "pre-history,"in June, 1793when the "sans- culotterie"already controlled most sections). Between 1789 and 1795, the most extensive social mutationof poweroccurred during the late summerof 1792,in the immediate passagefrom Monarchyto Republic.It can be measuredin the compositionof the electoralcorps, the GeneralCoucil of the Commune,and majorsectionary offices.54 Therewas no furthersystematic change in the social characterof local authorityuntil the springof 1795. Jeremiadsagainst the rich emanatedfrom the "sans-culotterie"of all sections in 1793-94.Soboul described them at length,as expressionsof class warfare(pp. 412-33, 457-91).Examination of theirsubstance, contexts and authorship suggests more precise meanings.Many jeremiads were threatening exhortations, summoning the wealthyto contributeto sectionarydemocracy, to cease abstentionor opposition.The following three were archetypicalof the genre: .. .Teardown the hugebarrier that mis-conceived pride and disastrousarrogance have causedyou to erect betweenyourselves and the people, thatpeople which I haveheard youinsult a thousandtimes and whose wisdom you have never dared to trust,that people whosehappiness lies in its virtue,its energy,and its disdainfor thoseartificial pleasures and possessionsthat havebecome indispensable needs for you.. .Welcomethe people franklyinto the midst of your assemblies;you have more education,but it has more sensibility;never use you learningto deceive the people, and it will use its strengthto defendyou... but neverattempt to subjugateit!5' Treacherousabstentionists, cold and cowardlymen! It is to you thatI am speaking andfor the last time... Listenwell! Never,no, neverwill the insolentopulence that you paradebefore the gaze of the indigentdestroy the equalitythat is ourunity and force... 96 journalof social history Renounceyour projects of counter-revolutionand all hopeof defeatingus; recognizeyour errorsand our superiorityof character;come to our assemblies,as we havefraternally invitedyou to do.. .Choose!Either the hope of regainingour friendship,or our most implacablehatred!56 Rich detractorsof the Revolution,who complainof the burdensit imposeson you, whathave you done for the Revolution?You have given a few 'assignats,'[paper money] while the impecuniouspatriot gives himselfto the serviceof the Nation, with a fervor beyondpraise.. .Of the two of you, who haddone the mostfor the Republic?It is certain thatyou are the least inclinedto supportin good faiththe costs of a sublimeRevolution undertakenfor the glory of enlightenmentand of humanity.57 These were admonitions to reform, not declarations of annihilatoryintent. And they carriedstrong echoes of JansenistCatholicism. The context for most of these threatening pressureson the wealthy was expressed by the spokesman for the Poissonnieresection's batallion of volunteers for the Vend6e, at the Convention on 20 March, 1793: "Now, let the comfortableand egotistical rich for whom we are marchingopen their purses!"58 From February to November, 1793 the Paris sections had to finance directly the recruiting and equipping of most of their quota contingents for the armies.59 This burden coincided with the intense crisis of provisioning in foodstuffs ("subsistances") out of which the "sans-culotterie"finally obtained the General Maximum on Prices and Wages of 29 September, 1793. By these necessities of Republican defense, the latent hostilities of bourgeois of work and their allies of labor towardrivals of unearned, speculative or superflous income were released and given ideological formulation. Excoriationof the rich and adulationof the poor came simultaneouslyfrom the Jacobin summit in 1793-94.The unanimitywas not accidental.Jacobinism, not hunger,provided the ideological cement of the "sans-culotterie,"and virtually every section of the City had members of the Jacobin Club among its "sans-culotte"cadre. In the language of "sans-culotte"leaders, "rich"was usually accompanied by the denoting adjectives "opulent," "lazy," "greedy," "egotistical," or "blood-sucking." "Mercantilearistocracy" and "capitalist"were also common epithets in 1793-94.Neither retail merchantswho sold at honest or regulatedprice nor masters of production were intended for embrace by this language; its targets were manipulators of mercantile capital, speculators who presumably controlled surreptitiouslythe flow of money and vital commodities. Images of usury, luxury, parasitism and counter-revolutionwere fused in these stigmata. By this language, Revolutionarybourgeois of work allied with a citizenry of labor violently repudiatedOld Regime plutocracyand an emerging class of speculators in national properties, currency, and the grain trade. The repudiation was tempered:by renouncingusury and luxury, by sacrifice and service, these persons could join the Republic. The social egalitarianismof that Republic was also tempered: "Ina Republic of brothers, no one enjoys superfluity until all virtuous and industrious citizens possess the necessities of life."60Wealth was tainted, but affluence was not intrinsically anathema. It became anathema if it was unearned by work, hoarded, consumed in narcissisticdisplay, or used to multiply itself outside circuitsof production. These distinctions within "sans-culotte"ideology were also integuments of a new political economy. The hostility of the 'sans-culotterie'toward large landownerswas only an emphatic manifestationof its instinctiveopposition to the rich.. .This instinctivereaction of the most humble['sans-culottes'] became a systematicattitude among the most awareand a rule of politicalconduct (pp. 416, 418). Here, Soboul distorted both the content and provenance of the "sans-culotterie's" social politics. Several militants whom he cited as direct voices of this "instinctive opposition"were, in fact, prescient bourgeois leaders. J.-E.-A. Lebrun, justice of the REVOLUTIONARYPARIS 97 peace and frequentassembly president of the Croix-Rougesection, was accusedof having"aroused uneducated citizens againstthe rich, merchants,and respectable, enlightenedmen." Lebrun was an elderly master-merchantrugmaker with some ten workersin his atelier;the son of a rugmaker,he had lived in the FaubourgSaint- Germainfor overforty years and held importantdistrict and sectionaryoffices since 1789.61Pierre-Henri Blandin, successively justice of thepeace of the Lombardssection, deputyto the Communeof 1793,and Vice-President of the CriminalTribunal of Paris in the YearII, allegedly"flattered.. .the class thathe calledthe 'sans-culottes'by his speechesand insulting comparisons with the wealthy"He owneda retailand wholesale businessin oils and spices, and had been an electorsince 1790.62Balthazard-Marie Laugier,justice of the peaceof the Fontaine-de-Grenellesection in 1793,was accused of sustainedverbal attacks on the rich and of proposingthe confiscationof rentier, banker,and financierproperties. A youngformer secretary to a noble familyof the FaubourgSaint-Germain, he movedthrough sectionary offices andJacobin militancy to concurrentdirectorships in the SubsistenceCommission of Parisand the Commission of Agricultureand Tradesin the YearII.63 Antoine Marlee, police commissionerof the Faubourgde Bondysection and presidentof its generalassembly at the time of the previouslycited "Derniermot aux insouciants,"also thunderedagainst the rich as "egotists"and "counter-revolutionaries." He was a youngstone sculptorand active citizen in 1789-92.64 Theattacks on monetaryand landed riches by thesemen and their counterparts within the"sans-culotte" elite throughoutthe Cityformed part of a generalstrategy of popular mobilizationand social control. In the terriblyastringent Parisian war economyof 1792-94,sumptuary wealth was both parasitical and corrosive of republicancommunity. Only majorsacrifices among the possessingclasses could guardthe institutionof propertyitself from plebeianrage. Sectionaryleaders of the "sans-culotterie"did not sufferfrom hunger in 1793.The mass of their constituentsdid, and almost obsessively.For Albert Soboul, Kare Tonnesson,George Rude and RichardCobb, the issue of "subsistances"- or statist provisioningof the metropolisin adequatequantities of vital foodstuffsat regulated and tolerableprices - was the most galvanicand radicalcomponent of the "sans- culotte"program. In fact, it was one of the most conservingof urbanmanufacturing interestsand urbanbourgeois power. The GeneralMaximum on Pricesand Wagesof 29 September,1793, by whichthe Stateguaranteed the provisioning of Parisat regulatedprices, was crucial to domination and mobilizationof the plebeianCity by "sans-culotte"and Jacobinbourgeois. The Maximum,and the greatauxilliary laws againsthoarding and currencyspeculation, were benefactionsfor plebeians and simultaneouslyParisian master artisans, manufacturers,retail tradesmen, and the bulkof urbanproperty owners. Those laws deflectedpopular animosities from these latter groups to ruralproprietors - farmers, shippers,and grain merchants. Price stabilization undercut wage agitations and meant fewer,and more easily repressed, strikes. "Assignats" - thepaper money through which the RevolutionaryState transformed itself intocapital - weremade the standardmode of wagepayment and commoditypurchase, as most Parisianemployers had desired since 1790-91.In symmetryto the "assignats,"ration coupons for breadand meat strengthenedbourgeois control of non-laboringplebeians; they were issued to the "deservingpoor" by sectionarycivil andwelfare commissioners, thus obviating begging, scavenging,and "directappropriations" of subsistence. By imposingfixed-price requisitioning of foodstuffsand raw materialsat their sources,the JacobinState forced the provincialpropertied classes to pay the social wageof the urbanlaboring classes, with the additionalbenefit to Parisianbourgeois 98 journalof social history of exportingthousands of the City'smore violentplebeians to do the hardwork of requisitioningin the ranksof the ParisianRevolutionary Army. Those laws established an economicimperialism of manufacturingcities andtowns - with Parisas capital of the imperium- over the provisioningcountryside of France.And they rendered the metropolisvulnerable to savageprovincial reaction in 1795-96. Thesurvival of theRepublic in 1793-94depended on therequisitioning of superfluous wealth and the regulationof trade. These measureswere also stages in a larger MontagnardJacobin project, a superblydaring and unrealized project shared by much of the "sansculotte" leadership - the divestitureof speculativelanded, mercantile and financecapital, and a statisttransformation of the Frencheconomy centered on expandedproduction and just distributionof vitalcommodities. Their project was the creation,from the disorder of warand civil strife,of a newpolity and political economy foundedon universalservice and productivity.And this was a projectof bourgeois. Conclusion In Les sans-culottesparisiens, Soboul discoveredand chartedfrom archivesan immense,vitally important historical expanse - sectionaryParis of 1793-94.For one historian,alone, to have navigatedthat immensitywas a heroic accomplishment. Subsequentexploration has been possible only because of his voyage. In the historiographyof RevolutionaryParis, Albert Soboul was a Magellan. But Les sans-culottesparisiens cannot be considered a social history of Revolutionary Paris,of sectionaryand municipalpower: the biographiesof the protagonistswere eithernot establishedor werepresented tendentiously; the socio-economicstrata and environmentsto which protagonistsbelonged and withinwhich they actedwere not reconstructed.It is equallydifficult to creditthis work as precursiveto "historical ethnology" as Ernest Labrousse and others have done; the methods of ethnology are empirical.65Soboul's monumental work projected the ambitionand a rhetoricof social history,but not its substance.This was a descriptivepolitical history whose explanatory foundationsare untenable. In criticallyevaluating Les sans-culottesparisiens, this essay has concentratedon the predominantlybourgeois composition of the "sans-culotte"cadre, socially and ideologically,and on its most "valent"groups: master-merchantsof production; professionalsof discourseand administration(who accountedfor 20 to 25 percent of sectionaryofficials in 1793-YearII). But staticclass identitiescannot be ascribed to a large segmentof the Revolutionarypersonnel of Paris. Anyclass-bound social analysis of a politicalrevolution is vulnerableto contradictions andreifications, for revolutionsalter social structures, at leasttemporarily, and create new socio-economicroles. Numerous"sans-culotte" leaders were "d6class6s" before andduring the Revolution,a processoften begun with immigrationto the City.Late eighteenthcentury Paris was a metropolisof immigrants;60 to 70 percentof its populationin 1789were of provincialorigin.66 Immigration was a salientphenomenon whoseramifications Soboul never examined. For both immigrants and native Parisiens withinthe "corpsde mEtiers,"the passagesfrom apprentice to journeymanto master wereoften changes of classidentity (particularly if the aspirant was not of a craftmasteres family): the apprenticewas a dependentproletarian; the journeymana skilled proletarian;the craft-mastercould becomean entrepreneurialbourgeois, but far less easily in the depressedParisian economy of the Revolutionaryyears. Soboul reduced militancyto assumedclass positions.In the concretelives of protagonists,the reverse wasmore often the truth:through successful militancy and leadership, class positions could be preserved,strengthened, or createdanew. TheRevolution both accelerated "ddclassement" and created arenas and a bureaucratic REVOLUTIONARYPARIS 99

spoils systemfor the forgingof a new class identitiesor the expandingof preexistent ones. This centralprocess in Parisof the 1790swas treatedby Soboulon two pages (1033-34)at the end of the work, only as a post mortemand lamenton the demise of sectionaryautonomies and the supposed"popular movement" in 1794. The magnetismby whichgovernance of the City andthe Statewas regeneratedhad operatedsince 1789,and with accelerating force since the insurrectionof August,1792 andthe foundationof the Republic.Relations between sectionary officials, Municipal elites, those of the "departement"and the RevolutionaryState had been laddersof recruitmentand ascension - by local militancyand prominence, municipal elections, triumphal"journ6es," clientage and patronageat the Jacobinand CordeliersClubs, and comprehensivenetworks of "thepolitics of friendship."By the Springof 1793, theserelationships stretched from the benches and committee rooms of theConvention, the entouragesof proconsuls,and the executivedivisions of the ministries(especially the vast Ministryof War)to revolutionarycommittees, justices of the peace, police commissioners,assembly officers, and batallion officers.67 The power of this magnetismis visible in the careersof the electors of 1792-94,the deputiesto the InsurrectionaryCommune of 1792and to the Communeof 1793-YearII. At the base of the Revolutionarymetropolis, more than one-third of the some 160men who served as justicesof the peace or police commissionersin the sectionsbetween 10 August, 1792and the purges in the spring of 1795won some governmentemployment or appointment(often a prestigiousmission to "r6volutionner"and "sans-culottiser" provincials);of some 550 revolutionarycommissioners, a similarproportion received suchbenefices. (All revolutionarycommissioners were appointed and salaried by the Stateafter October, 1793). The relationsbetween sectionary personnel and the Jacobin Statewere not, as Soboulinsisted, antinomies of "popularmovement" and "revolutionary government;"they were a complex and, duringthe YearII, increasinglyfrictional symbiosis. Formany of thosewho emergedto Parisianstatus and significant income in 1792-94 by avenuesof sectionaryleadership, the Revolutionwas, objectively,something of a last chance.The majorityof "sans-culotte"leaders were well implantedsocially in their"quartiers" at the adventof the Revolution.In 1792-94,they sharedpower with numerousother men, no longerexactly young, of rupturedcareers or decayedtrades andbusinesses (particularly in the debrisof Old Regimebureaucracies and the luxury trades):redundant scribes, men of the law and"men of letters;"recent master artisans withoutcapital to becomeor remainentrepreneurs; journeymen poised for mastership but unableto makethe financialleap; and manyimmigrants possessed of education and skills but "dclass6"and "d6gringoleur"(tumbling downward) - fugitivesfrom the provinces(or sinisterterrorist "marauders" to theirthermidorian enemies), often once-bourgeois,ex-this and ex-that in Normandy,Anjou, Picardy, the Franche-Comt6 (amonghundreds, one thinkshere of JacquesRoux and Gracchus Babeuf), who strove ardentlyfor metropolitanpolitical office andthus social redemption.In the language of Sobouland in theirown, they were collectively"militants devoted to the popular cause."In my language,they had to be. To their action, the "sans-culotterie"owed much of its politicalcreativity and suppleness. The leadersof the "sans-culotterie"were not surfaceparticles of a mass. Most of themwere victors in fierceinternecine sectionary competitions; for each winner, many othercontestants had bitten the politicaland even social dust. By mid-1793,they formed a metropolitanelite, almosta collectivityof their own. Thatelite linkedthe forty- eightsections and bound them to theMunicipality, the "ddpartement" and, by thecrucial mediationsof the Jacobinand Cordeliersclubs, to the Montagnardsof the National Convention.More than any other force, the "sans-culotte" elite createdand maintained 100 journalof social history

the Montagnard Jacobin hegemony within the state in 1793-YearII. And yet, their collective militancywas too original, comprehensive,and danger-froughtto have derived primarily from self-aggrandizing materialism. Their ideology was also one of self- compulsion and self-sacrifice; they took enormous risks in a struggle for a new polity and political economy. They perceived their goals not as expediences but as objects of nationalduty. Many of them obstinately pursuedthose goals into bitter, deadly culs- de-sac in the Spring of 1795 and in 1796 with the doomed Conspiracyof the Equals.68 The general posterity of the former "sans-culotte"cadre beyond 1815,their biological, socio-economic and political posterity, remains virtually unknown. Historians have neglected that research, preferring to study the brief insurrectionary scuffle of July, 1830 or the more dramatic effusions of rhetoric and blood in 1848 and to make sociological assumptions about revolutionary traditions in nineteenth century Paris. How many younger brothers, sons, sons-in-law, and grandsons of the former "sans- culotte"elite were among the insurgentsof the July Monarchyand the Second Republic, and how many progeny gave allegiance on the other side of those barricades? Soboul tangled the individualitiesof the "sans-culotte"leaders in an imaginary"mass movement,"and he misconstruedtheir complex, and often authoritarian,relations with the plebeian classes. To unravel interests, duties, purposes, risks and consequences among the "sans-culotte"cadre, to uncover subjectiveand objective meaningsof politics in Paris of 1793-YearII, the appropriatemethods are not simply those of class analysis. They should also encompass the investigation of moral and cultural formation (the sources of ideological adhesions) and of honorific and role stratifications in Parisian and provincial society. These research methods and paths lead back into the Old Regime, into its guilds, businesses, bureaucracies, law courts, parishes, schools, and literary circles, back into the formative milieux of Jacobins and "sans-culottes.' Ultimately, they are the methods of prosopography, the most venerable in the craft, the least abstract, the closest to experience. That the Parisian "sans-culotterie"of 1793-94, the most radical movement within the French Revolution, was fundamentallya bourgeois movementmay seem a startling, even bizarre conclusion. (The Conspiracy of the Equals was not a movement; it was a desperateplot, of some five months duration, by remnantsof the "sansculotterie.")69 But if one examines Parisian society from outside the perspectives of Soboul and his historiographicschool, that conclusion becomes comprehensible.Only bourgeoiscould have ruled the fragmented and embattled Revolutionary metropolis of 1792-94, for only they possessed economic autonomies, programmaticcapacities, and the means to mobilize and regiment plebeians. To contemporaryadversaries, and for a lineage of historians from Thiers and Taine to Augustin Cochin and Franqois Furet, the rule of the "sans-culotterie"in 1793-94 was an aberration, or a brutal "derapage"(side-slip) from legitimacy.70Despite the populist visage and the complexity of motives, "sans-culotte"rule constituted, in fact, - an authenticallyhegemonic period in the history of the Parisianbourgeoisie through its domination of the City, reconstruction of the State, and tutelage of the Nation in republican discipline. By this revolutionary enterprise, the composition and form of the Parisian bourgeoisie were altered. The protagonists of the enterprise shatteredthe authority of the French monarchy, destroyed the political power of the nobility and the clergy within the metropolis, and forced bourgeois elites traditionally allied with monarchy,nobility and clergy to new identities and roles. They also began the epochal task of molding violent and mercurial plebeian masses into an industrious citizenry. Precisely how and by whom this hegemony was achieved are questions that remain to be answered. Political revolutions are about power and populations: the sources, environments, REVOLUTIONARY PARIS 101

and institutions of power; its protagonists and those whom they ruled; how power was gained and preserved; the purposes to which it was used and their consequences; and how power was transferred,lost, or conqueredby successors. These analyticalproblems of power in Revolutionary Paris still await solutions. They will not be solved by theoreticians of revolution, but only by empirical progression through "quartiers"- their populations, structures, hierarchies, conflicts and solidarities - to establish the metropolitan entity and its politics, and thence its relations with the state and the provinces of the Nation.

Heyman Center for the Humanities, Richard Mowery Andrews Columbia University N.YC. 10027

FOOTNOTES

1. All citationsand translations from the workare fromthe originaledition, Les sans-culottes parisiensen lan II:mouvement populaire et gouvernementreolutionnaire, 2 juin 1793-9thermidor an II (LibrairieClavreuil, Paris, 1958). Soboul never revised or modifiedhis thesesin subsequent editionsand translationsof the work. In prefaceto the Flammarionabridged edition (Paris, 1973)he defiantlywrote: Duringthe past fifteen years, scholarly research on theFrench Revolution has expanded and deepened. Despitecertain sterile polemics, we do notconsider that our interpretations of thehistorical problems treatedhere have been alteredor refuted,either by scientificerudition or by criticalthought. And the relevanceof those problemsendures; it is carriedonward by the very movementof history. For an incisivesummary of the polemics, see GeoffreyEllis, "The'Marxist Interpretation' of the FrenchRevolution," in EnglishHistorical Review XCII (1978):353-76. The YearII of the Republicwas from22 September,1793 to 21 September,1794; the YearHIl from 22 September, 1794to 22 September,1795. 1792-94 refers to the periodfrom the Insurrectionof 10 August, 1792,that destroyedthe Monarchyand createdthe Republic,to the close of the YearII and theend of theJacobin/"sans-culotte" hegemony. I have used the followingabbreviations for archives andlibraries: A.D.S. (Archivesd6partementales de la Seine);A.N. (Archivesnationales); A.P.P. (Archivesde la Prdfecturede Police); B.HV.P.(Bibliotheque historique de la Ville de Paris); B.N. (Bibliothequenationale); B.V.C. (Bibliotheque Victor Cousin); Brit. Mus. (British Museum).

2. Les paysansdu Nordpendant la Revolutionfranqaise, 2nd edition (Bari, 1959), vi. 3. The Panth6on-Franqaissection was the most populousin Paris(23,000-24,900), one of the most plebeian,and politicallyquite "sans-culotte"in 1793-94.The official votingpopulation totalledperhaps 4,500 afterAugust, 1792.There were only 636 voluntarybeneficiaries of the indemnityof two "livres"between 5 November,1793 and 19 April, 1794;during that period therewere thirty-four meetings of the generalassembly. Over half of the 636 attendedseventeen or fewermeetings. Haim Burstin,"Les citoyens des quarantesols: analysesocio-politique a l'interieurde la sans-culotterie,"Annales historiques de la Revolutionfranqaise 53 (1983):93-113. 4. Therhythms of laborwere not thoseof politics.Most laborers worked from dawn until dusk; assemblymeetings usually began at 6:00 P.M. and lasted, or were prolongedfor important decisions,until 10:00or 12:00 P.M. To be an assiduouscitizen, the laborerhad to sacrifice income,"chopines," supper, and sleep. More significantly,from April, 1793through the Year H nearlya majorityof theplebeian classes of the Citywere excluded officially from participation in sectionaryassemblies. The "carte de suretC"(an identity card) was required for entryto them. It was obtainedonly fromthe revolutionaryor civil committeeand only aftercertification of a year of residence,actual employmentor "respectable"means of existence, and usually performanceof guardservice. The policing mechanism of the"cartes" both excluded those transient 102 journal of social history

and unemployed and reinforced the authority of employers over their workers (see the registers of the revolutionarycommittee of the R6union section and Observatoiresection, A.N. F7 #2494, 2514).

5. On the socio-economic fluidity of the plebeian classes in eighteenth century France, see the following:A. Abbiateciand F. Billacois, eds., Crimeset criminaliteen Francesous lAncien Regime,17e-18e siecles (Paris, 1971);Richard Cobb, The Police and People:French Popular Protest,1789-1820 (Oxford, 1970) and his Reactionsto the FrenchRevolution (Oxford, 1972); J. Combes, "Population mouvante et criminalite a Versailles A la fin de lAncien R6gime,"in Hommagea MarcelReinhard: sur la populationfrancaise au 18eet au 19esiecles (Paris,1973), 135-60;Arlette Farge, Delinquence et criminalite:le vol dblimentsa Parisau 18esiecle (Paris, 1974)and her excellentVivre dans la rue a Parisau 18esiecle (Paris,1979); Arlette Farge and AndreZysberg, "Les theatres de la violencea Parisau 18esiecle," Annales: economies, societes, civilisations34 (1979):985-1016; Jean-Pierre Gutton, La societe et les pauvres:lexemple de la Generalitede Lyon(1534-1789) (Paris, 1971); idem, La societeet les pauvresen Europe,16e-18e siecles (Paris, 1974);B. Geremek, "Criminalit6,vagabondage, pauperisme: la marginalit6a l'aube du tempsmodeme," Revue dhtistoire modeme et contemporaine21 (1974):337-75; Pierre Goubert, "Le monde des errants, mendiants et vagabonds a Paris et autour de Paris au 18e si6cle," in his Clioparmi les homnmes(Paris, 1976): 265-78; Olwen Hufton, The Poor of 18thCentury France (Oxford,1974); T.J.A. Legoff, Vannes and its Region:A Studyof Townand Countryin Eighteenth CenturyFrance (Oxford, 1981); Jean-Claude Perrot, Genese d'une ville modern:Caen au 18e siecle (Paris, 1975), and the discussion of this work by Perrot, Jean-PierreBardet, Jean Bouvier, MarcelRoncayola, and DanielRoche in Annales:economies, societes, civilisations 32 (1977): 1237-54;A. Poitrineau,ed., Entrefaim et loup---les problemesde la vie et de lmigration sur les hautesterres franqaises au 18e siecle (Clermont-Ferrand,1977); Michel Vovelle,"Le proletariatflottant a Marseillesous la R6volutionfrancaise," Annales de demographiehistorique 3 (1968); idem, "De la mendicit6au brigandage:les errantsen Beauce sous la Revolutionfrancaise; in his Villeet campagneau 18e siecle (Chartreset la Beauce)(Paris, 1980), 277-306.Such empirical investigation of the plebeian classes during the Old Regime and the Revolution rarely appearsin the Annaleshistoriques de la Revolutionfranqaise, of which Soboul was general editor from 1967 to 1982; instead its pages have remained filled with elitist hagiography of Robespierre, Saint-Just, Babeuf, et al. In La grandepeur de 1789,2nd ed. (Paris,1956), Georges Lefebvre described peristaltic waves of migrations across Northern France during the 1780s. The records of police, revolutionary, civil and relief commissioners, of prisons and the courts, reveal continuance of this massive flow to and within Paris in the 1790s. Les sans-culottesparisiens ignored vagabondage, mendicancy, scavenging and criminality among the plebeians of Paris. Soboul envisioned only a sanitized, morally scrubbed metropolitan populace; it was muscled, but it lacked hair in its arm pits or fangs in its mouth. His narrow,distortional presentationof plebeians as wage-earners and consumers probably derived from historiographic priorities obtaining within the French Communist Party during the 1950s - notably, the genetic search for capitalist relations of production (centered on wage) and exchange (centered on commodity prices), and disdain for those identifiable as "lumpenproletarians."For a discussion of those priorities among British Communist Partyhistorians during that decade - and of the socially proteancharacter of British plebeian life in the seventeenthand eighteenth centuries - see Peter Linebaugh, "Allthe Atlantic MountainsShook, Labour/LeTravailleur: Journal of CanadianLabour Studies 10 (1982): 87-121.

6. The conquest of power by the "sans-culottes"of the Arsenal section, on 26-27 May, 1793, was well documented by "sans-culottes"and their opponents. On 24 and 25 May the anti-"sans- culotte"faction gained control of the general assembly and projected a purge of the revolutionary committee. The "sans-culotte"counterattack was mounted on 26 May, a Monday and payday for wage laborers. The latter knew that "this evening there will be fighting in the assembly;" the "sans-culotte"leaders, many of whom were entrepreneurialmasters, urged or ordered them to attend. The decisive "bagarre"ensued that evening. It was won by the "sans-culottes,"reinforced by "fraternizing"deputations from other sections. The gladiators of the Arsenal were principally craft-masters,journeymen and laborers versus merchants, lawyers, notaries and their clerks. On this struggle, see A.N. W 41, dos. 2764; C 355, plaq. 1859 (memoir of Ledru); F7 4733, REVOLUTIONARY PARIS 103 dos. P.-A.Grillot; "Arrestations et desarmementsde la Sectionde lArsenalen vertude la loi du ler prairial[Year mHI] AD XVI 71; F16Im Seine, 27 (Dutard'sreport, 27 May 1793). 7. MarcelReinhard, Nouvelle histoire de Paris: la Revolution(Paris, 1971),259.

8. TheContrat-Social section ("quartier" of the Hallesand Saint-Eustache) illustrates most fully this generalpattern. Many of the nominativeminutes of its assemblieshave survived:those from4 December,1790 to 5 September,1792 were publishedby FrldericBraesch in Proces- verbauxde lAssemblegenerale de la Sectiondes Postes(Paris, 1911); the recordsof theprimary assemblies(for electionof officials)from 22 October,1792 to 11February, 1793 are in A.D.S. D 9* 1002;the minutesof the generalassemblies from 18 April to 19 May, 1793are in A.N. C 355 plaq. 1860.In the censitaryperiod, the sectionhad approximately 1,000 active and eligible citizens;after August, 1792 the votingpopulation officially totaled 3,224. Between4 December, 1790and 5 September,1792 approximately 400 citizensparticipated at leastonce in theassemblies; those who attendedfrequently, and from amongwhom the section'sleadership was elected, numberedabout 200. In theprimary assemblies from October, 1792 to February,1793 attendance oscillatedbetween 367 and 101over a totalof twenty-twomeetings; the averageattendance was 204. Here,as in mostsections of Paris,April-May, 1793 was a time of intensepolitical conflict andactivism, with the assembliesmeeting almost each evening. The protagonists of the Contrat- Social remaineda small elite of regularparticipants: 328 on 7 May for the electionof a new police commissioner;about 350 (supplementedby "fraternizing"deputations from six other sections)in the "regeneration"session of 18 May.In 1793,as before,a majorityof the same namesrecurred in the minutes.There is no evidenceof an expandedelectorate in the Contrat- Social duringthe YearII. Local"popular societies" were the interiorbase from which "sans-culottes" won power in most sectionsof the City.Their membership was also proportionatelyquite small and, in manycases, morepropertied than plebeian. The societyof the Lepeletiersection ("quartier" of the Bourse) had about60 membersin April, 1792and about 170in February,1794, on the eve of purges (B.N. nouvellesacquisitions frangaises ms. 2662, fols. 31-32,74-77). In late September,1793 the Soci6t6 populairedes Hommes Libres of the Pont-Neufsection attainedits maximal membership,104, of whomalmost one-half were sectionary officials and morethan one-third werecraftsmen of the "orfevrerie-bijouterie-horlogerie"andrelated precision trades (B.N. nouv. acq. franc.ms. 2713,fol. 114).The votingpopulation of that sectiontotaled 1,500-1,800. The Societ6populaire et republicainede l'Unit6(Quatre-Nations section, in the LatinQuarter) had 280 membersin January,1794, from a votingpopulation of over3,000. Politically, this was an avant-gardesection and a Cordelierstronghold in 1792-94;it also had a substantialplebeian population.Of the society's280 members,more thanhalf were skilled craftsmen,mostly in luxury trades; the remainderwere principallytradesmen or municipaland government bureaucrats("Liste des membrescomposants la Soci6tepopulaire et r6publicainede l'Unite," Paris,an II, Brit.Mus. F 8275). Sectionaryclubs had far more the character of exclusivedebating and coordinatinggroups than of mass organizations.They were conduitsbetween Jacobin orthodoxy,defined in the clubon the rue Saint-Honore,and the "sans-culotterie."And they were forumsfor concerting"sans-culotte" defenses, initiatives,and nominationlists for general assemblies.

9. A.N. BB3 80, dos. 6.

10. This was done in the Commune'sinstruction to revolutionarycommittees on enforcement of the Lawof Suspectsvoted by the Conventionon 17September, 1793: "Caracteres qui doivent distinguerles hommessuspects et a qui on doit refuserle certificatde civisme... . (Brit.Mus. F 6153). Onlytwo of the Convention'ssix categoriesof "suspect"referred to rhetoricor speech- actions;nine of the Commune'stwelve "characteristics" denoted rhetorical behavior, or its refusal by abstainingfrom section assemblies.

11. Denunciationsof the following:Claude Fiquet, architect, deputy of the Templesection to the Commune,1793-Year 1, andan administratorof MunicipalPolice (A.N. W 559, dos. Fiquet, F7 4774/32, dos. Mallais);Joseph Feneaux, shoemaker, deputy of the Faubourg-de-Bondy 104 journal of social history section to the Commune, 1793-YearII, and juror of the RevolutionaryTribunal (A.N. F7 4775/32, dos. Toupiolle); Jacques Cordas, embroiderer, assembly leader of the Lonbards section and deputy to the Commune, 1793-YearII (A.N. F7 4653, dos. Cordas); Gdrard-JeanArfilliere, construction entrepreneur in the Ponceau section (A.N. F7 4581, dos. Arfilliere).

12. Francois-Ren6Ferrand, master joiner and revolutionarycommissioner of the Ponceausection, who, in 1790-91 employed five journeymen in making spindles for garment manufacturersof the region (A.N. F7 4774/76, dos. Piot, F30 136, dos. Ferrand). Alexandre Belanger, architect and rentier,Faubourg-Montmartre section (this "simpleartisan" was also a considerablepurchaser of nationalized properties in his section and the region of the Place-Vendome, A.N. F7 4592, dos. Belanger).

13. On thesequalities see especiallyRestif de la Bretonne,Monsieur Nicolas ou le coeurhumain devoile,16 vols. (Paris,1794-97); idem, Les nuitsde Paris,7 vols. (Paris,1788); L.-S. Mercier, Le tableaude Paris, 12 vols. (Amsterdam,1781-88); idem, Le nouveauParis, 6 vols. (Paris, 1798);the essayson chroniclersof eighteenthcentury Paris in La ville au 18e siecle: colloque dAix-en-Provence(Aix-en-Provence, 1974);Robert Damton, "The High Enlightenment and the Low-Lifeof Literaturein Pre-RevolutionaryFrance," in FrenchSociety and the Revolution(ed. DouglasJohnson, Cambridge, 1976) 53-87; Cobb, The Police and the People;Farge, Vivre dans la rue a Parisau 18e siecle. For a fine studyof the highly valuedobverse of mendacityand contrivance,see YvesCastan, Honnetete et relationssociales en Languedoc(1715-1780) (Paris, 1974).

14. The dossiers of these employers in production of commodities date from the spring of 1790 to early 1792, with the bulk of them concentrated from mid-1790 to the end of 1791(A.N. F30 115-160).They resulted from requests made to the Treasuryby employers for small denominations of "assignats"(in exchange for equivalent value in coin) with which to pay workers. Without this official exchange at equivalence, employers were forced to pay wages in gold or silver coin (which they did not wish to do, especially at short intervals) or to purchase "assignats"from moneychangers (which in 1790-91 entailed losses of from 6 to 7.5 percent). Each request had to be accompanied by lists of the numbers of workers at wage or piece-rate and their aggregate pay each fortnightor month; the enumerationshad to be certified by commissioners of the district or section and by inspectorsof the appropriatetrades. For these reasons, the lists may be considered fairly accurate. Collectively, these heads of enterprisewere the summitsof productionin late eighteenthcentury Paris, for they were the master artisans and manufacturerswho possessed sufficient capital to hire wage labor.Marcel Reinhard (Nouvelle histoire de Paris, 46-47) estimatedthat in 1789 Paris contained 40,000-50,000 masters of production and commerce. Only 3,800 of them were capitalizedon a scale adequatefor representationin F30. The great majorityof the masterartisanate either did not employ labor (and sold its own) or remuneratedworkers primarily by the ancient, patriarchal modes of lodging, food, job training, small coin, and permission to retain some products for personal marketing, barter or use. The bulk of artisan enterprises were familial: in the majority of them, labor was not purchased; rather,it was accomplished by sons, brothers, nephews, cousins and in-laws, who were often imported from the provinces in adolescence. The "patrons"of F30 were those who remuneratedprincipally in monetary wage. Even those among them with fewer than five workers belonged to the higher tiers of capital in the structure of production. For every F.-R. Ferrand, masterjoiner with five salariedjourneymen, there were scores of tenuous masters who worked alone, for others, or with a few relatives. In certain trades, the actual workforces of masters in F30 were larger than the enumerations in the dossiers, for these latter did not necessarily include relatives and others remuneratedby non-monetarymeans. The case of Alexandre Duval in the Gravilliers section illustrates this phenomenon. His dossier of September, 1790 listed only four salaried workers in his roofing and paving business on the rue des Vertus. In August, 1793 he, his associates, and his workers all registered on the same day for "cartes de suretd;" the register suggests that in 1790-91 there were a least thirteen journeymen, apprentices, common laborers and clerks in his business, of which only four were paid regular wages. The Duval brothers had imported labor, most of it consanguine, from their region of origin - the environs of Saint-Martin-Don(Calvados) in the western Norman "bocage. REVOLUTIONARY PARIS 105

(A.N. F30 133, dos. Duval; F7 4795, register of "cartes de suirete,"12th company.) These dossiers were studied first by Frederic Braesch, "Un essai de statistiquede la population ouvrierede Parisvers 1791,"La Revolutionfrancaise 63 (1912):289-321. Soboul (pp. 435-36) summarized and criticized Braesch's statistical presentation. Like Braesch, Soboul perceived only the laboring component of this source; he did not apprehend its genuine social richness, the materials for an economic profile of the Parisian bourgeoisie of production at the advent of the Revolution. Even regarding the wage-labor populace, these documents cannot be used, as did Braesch and Soboul, to establish its geographical distribution in the City. The dossiers often specify that many workers were not resident in the sections in which they worked, but lived simply "en ville" or "en faubourg."Finally, Soboul wrote: "The figures given by employers denote only masculine labor; female labor was not yet significantly employed in Paris"(p. 435). Both statements are false. In relevant sectors of production, the gender of workers was often specified in the dossiers. Garment, fabric, and accessories manufacturingwas the third largest productive sector of the Parisian economy; the majority of that workforce was female. In the "orfevrerie-bijouterie-horlogerie"(of which there were approximately 850 masters in 1788-89) the polishing of precious metals was done almost exclusively by women.

15. For demographicstudies of RevolutionaryParis based on the "cartesde sfirete, see the volumes of Contributionsa 17zistoiredemographique de la Revolutionfrancaise, ed. MarcelReinhard (Paris, 1962, 1965, 1970).

16. The Reunion section (the western portion of the Marais, between the rue Saint-Martinand the rues Sainte-Avoyeand Temple) was exceptionally strife-ridden in 1793-95. For a description of the factional struggles, see my "The Justices of the Peace of Revolutionary Paris, September 1792-November,1794," in FrenchSociety and the Revolution,op. cit., pp. 208-12.

17. "Precis sur la Revolution...' A.N. AD I 66. In 1793, Didot was a primary leader of both the revolutionarycommittee and the popular society (their registers are in A.N. F7* 2494 and 2495).

18. A.N. F7 4677, dos. Didot.

19. A.N. F30 151, dos. Firmin-Didot; F30 152, doss. Didot "aine"and Didot "jeune."Francois Didot (1689-1757),the founder of the dynasty, was in 1753 "syndic"(senior master) of the Parisian guild of bookdealers-printers;in the 1850s his great-grandsonwas presidentof the Book Publishers Circle of Paris; their lineal descendent, Robert Firmin-Didot, was vice-president of the National Federation of Printers and member of the Council of the Bank of France until shortly before his death in 1961. The firm is still today one of the largest in French publishing. On these geneologies,see HenriCostan, Dictionnaire des dynastiesbourgeoises et du mondedes affaires (Paris, 1975), 230-34.

20. "Ministere de la police generale: tableau des noms et d6clarations des employes. . .du 12 vendemiaire an VIeme," A.N. AF III 28, liasse 95.

21. These trajectories from sectionary politics into the national state are a principal theme of my forthcoming work on Revolutionary Paris. On bureaucratic recruitment and expansion in 1793-96,see Clive H. Church,Revolution and Red Tape:The French Ministerial Bureaucracy, 1770-1850(Oxford, 1981).

22. A.N. F7 4635, dos. Caubert; F30 133, dos. Caubert.

23. A.N. F7 4669, dos. Desmonceaux; F30 133, dos. Desmonceaux.

24. A.N. F7* 2486; F30 133,dos. Beaudouin;F7 4795,"cartes de sirete, 25thcompany; A.D.S. D 6U/1 3, liasse "scelles." 106 journal of social history 25. A.N. W 149, liasse 2. Cochois was probablyimprisoned after the petitionwas written. The revolutionarycommittee sent a similarlylaudatory report on him to the Committeesof Government(A.N. F7 4650, dos. Cochois).

26. On this richlyelitist careerin 1792-94,see A.N. F7 4604, dos. J. Bodson;BB 80, liasse 1; AD XVI 72; D III 251-52, liasse 2; Fib II Seine, 18; W 27, liasse 1654;B.N. nouv. acq. franc.ms 2713(minutes of the Socidtepopulaire des Hommes-Libres);J. Bodsonand J.-B. Felix, "Extraitsdu rapportdes commissairesFelix.. .et Bodson...," Paris, 1792,B.N. Lb412321; PierreCaron, Les missions du Conseilexrcutifprovisoire et de la Communede Paris(Paris, 1950).

27. "'Burins'must be made of the purest steel, preferablyfrom Germanyor England..." Encyclopedie,ou dictionnaireraisonne. .. (Paris,1791), vol. V, 610."Engravers" are among the artistes"whose talents can gain them membership in theRoyal Academy of Paintingand Sculpture. ibid., vol. XIV, 551. Jean-BaptisteFosseyeux, revolutionary commissioner of the Pantheon- Fran;aissection in 1793-YearII, wasone of fourmaster engravers "t burin"qualified as "artistes" in Boissier'senterprise of gildingand engraving on the ruede la Contrescarpein 1790.Fosseyeux hadan apprentice-pupil(who was paidby Boissier)and earned an averageof forty-five"livres" a week, or about2,400 a year. He exhibitedin the Academysalons of 1800, 1808, 1819and 1822.A.N. F7 4710,dos. Fosseyeux;F30 157,dos Boissier"freres;" B.H.V.P. ms 758, fol. 146; EtienneCharavay, Assemblee electorale de Paris, 2 septembre1792 - 17frimairean II Paris, 1905III, 80).

28. A.N. F7 4604, doss. J. Bodsonand L.-A. Bodson;F7 4803, registerof "cartesde surete" Pont-Neufsection; A.P.P Aa 216, fols. 323-28.

29. A.N. F7 4645, dos. J.-C.Chemin; F7 4803, registerof "cartesde sfiretd;"F7 4645, dos. J.-B. Chemin;AD XXc 72, fol. 132.

30. A.N. F7 4475/25, dos. Tarreau;A.P.P. Aa 216, fols. 207-9. 31. A.N. F7 4650, dos. Cochois; F30 149, dos. Cochois.

32. On the guild, see especiallythe Repertoireuniverselle et raisonnede jurisprudence civile, criminelle,canonique et beneficielle(Paris, 1787),vol. XII, 461-68.

33. Among their conservativeopponents (also of the guild) EtienneGide, "ofhaughty and imperiouscharacter," allegedly enjoyed 6000 "livres"a year in rentalincome; Pierre George, a jewellerimprisoned for "anti-civicconduct," had producedfor nobleswho emigrated(A.N. F7 4725, dos. Gide; F7 4722, dos. George). ButGeorge and his anti-"sans-culotte"comrades had used similarhypocrisy: on 30 May,1793 the conservativeleaders of the Pont-Neufassured the JacobinCommune that "the entire mass of the Sectionis patriotic,being composed exclusively of workers[i.e. craftsmen]who, because of this fact, desire only freedomand equality"(B.N. nouv. acq. franc.ms 2712,fols. 4-6).

34. A.N. F7 4775/26,dos. Tesseyre;A.P.P. Aa 185, fols. 124-25. 35. A.N. F30 127,dos. Lechenard.These forty workers were able to manufacture2,740 garters, 1,040pairs of breeches,and 1,700collar stocks for the nationalguard of the Saone-et-Loire "d6partement"during the secondhalf of 1791,in additionto producingfor Lechenard'scustomers in Paris.

36. "D6partementde Paris:marchandises et denr6es,journ6es et main-d'oeuvre,"July, 1793, A.N. Fll 218, liasse 1793. 37. A.N. F30 135, dos. Saunier;Flb II Seine, 18. 38. "Marchandises....main d'oeuvre,"A.N. Fll 218, liasse 1793. REVOLUTIONARY PARIS 107

39. A.N. F30, 117,dos. Deveze.He also paidthe secondhighest direct tax (1,035"livres") among the233 activecitizens of the Faubourg-du-Roulelisted in July,1790 (A.N. F7 4718,dos. Gaudet).

40. A.N. F7 4666, dos. Delamarre.Or Jacques Fouchy, "marchand limonadier" on the rueSaint- Denis, "sellingcoffee at one 'sou'a cup andheating water for those who wish to shave"(A.P.P. Aa 171,fol. 29). 41. A.N. F7 4648, dos. Chrdtien;A.P.P. Aa 80, fols. 237-41.

42. See GeorgesRude, The Crowd in the FrenchRevolution (Oxford, 1959); idem, La ddfaite des sans-culottes:mouvement populaire et reactionbourgeoise en lan II (Paris,1959); Gwyn A. Williams,Artisans and Sans-culottes:Popular Movements in Franceand Britainduring the FrenchRevolution (London, 1968). R.B. Rose, TheMaking of the "Sans-culottes:"Democratic Ideasand Institutions in Paris,1789-92 (Manchester, 1983) is themost recent case of thisacademic "suivisme":Rose transferred Sobours formulations and methods back in timeto describeParisian politics in 1789-92.And see FrancoisFuret, La Revolutionfrangaise (Paris, 1981);and Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret,"Villes en Revolutions,"in Histoirede la Franceurbaine, ed. Georges Duby (Paris, 1980) vol. III, 539-89. 43. Soboul'sconception was a teleos of smoke-belchingfactories inhabited by capitalistsand proletarians.In regardto the Parisianmaster artisanate of the Revolutionaryera, the teleos is a myth;as a class, they were not threatenedwith extinctionby industrialproduction. In 1847, the wage-earninglabor force of Parisnumbered 342,530 (andwas roughlythe sameproportion to totalpopulation as in the 1790s);it was employedby 64,816"patrons," of whom only 7,117 employedmore than ten workers (R. Price,The French Second Republic: A SocialHistory [Ithaca, 1972],pp. 5-8). In 1848,according to statisticsof the ParisChamber of Commerce,the average numberof workersto employersin the City was 5.3; the medianwas 7.5. (CharlesTilly and LynnLees, "The People of June,1848," in Revolutionand Reaction: 1848 and the SecondFrench Republic[ed. R. Price, New York, 1975],pp. 192-193).In 1872,the averageunit of "grande industrie"in Franceemployed nineteen workers; the averageworkforce for all producing enterpriseswas five (R. Price, The FrenchSecond Republic, pp. 5-8). In 1911,by a national census,234 percentof all personsin commodityproduction were artisans, either self-employed or independentwith smallworkforces (R.D. Anderson,France, 1870-1914: Politics and Society [London,1977], p. 32). In 1906, there were a total of 673, 688 enterprisesof non-agrarian commodityproduction in France:591,811 employed five or fewerworkers; 55,004 employed six to twenty;3,950 employed101 to 500; 611employed more than 500. In 1926,there were a totalof 588,094such enterprises:485,115 employed five or fewerworkers; 69,786 employed six to twenty;5,944 employed101 to 500; 953 employedmore than 500 (JacquesNder, La TroisiemeRepublique, 1914-1940 [Paris, 1967], p. 90). See also,Steven M. Zdatny,"The Artisanate in France:An EconomicPortrait, 1900-1956," French Historical Studies XII (1984): 415-40. Smoke- belchingfactories, not artisanworkshops, were economicallythe most vulnerableand fragile units of manufacturingin Francefrom the late eighteenthcentury into the twentieth.

44. On the region,see LouisBergeron, Banquiers, negociants et manufacturiersparisiens du Directoirea lEmpire(Paris, 1978), p. 15; idem, "Croissanceurbaine et societe a Parisau 18e siecle in La ville au 18e siecle op. cit., pp. 127-34;Adeline Daumard, Maisons de Paris et proprietairesparisiens au XIXesiecle, 1809-1880(Paris, 1965), pp. 83-115,175-231 and idem, La bourgeoisieparisienne de 1815a 1848(Paris, 1963), pp. 181-211;J.H. Hillairet,Connaissance du VieuxParis: Rive Droite (Paris, 1951),pp. 318-21. 45. A.N. F30 133and 135,doss. Scharf;F7 4795,"cartes de surete,"14th and 42nd companies. In March,1796, the eldest, Frederic, died of a cardiacseizure while raising a heavybeam. A.P.P. Aa 155, fol. 57.

46. Temporaryinsolvency was more frequent.The "Tableaustatistique de l'industrieet du commercedu Sixiemearrondissment de Paris"(A.N. F20 255) revealsthat in 1807the majority of these artisanenterprises were still in businessand in the same locales. 108 journal of social history 47. Since the 1780s, Germain Truchon had owned, by inheritance, 300 acres of wheatland and vineyard near Semur in the Cote-d'Or; he left the committee for an executive position in the Commission of National Properties of the Paris "ddpartement."Louis Derouvrois became the section's hoarding commissioner, a well-salaried position. Jacques Lambert had been absent from the section and the committee since late May, as captain in the Gravilliers battalion in the Vend6e; in November, he was promoted by the Montagnardproconsuls to the rank of adjutant general. (Lambert had enlisted at age sixteen in the Royal Infantry Regiment of the Perche; he served from 1776 to 1784 and in the American War.) Georges Leblanc acquired a position in the Police Bureauof the Municipality.Antoine Petillon also had municipalemployment. Nicolas Petit left the committee for the salary of recording secretary of the tribunal of the sixth arrondissment. Pierre Egasee was appointed a director of the Central Post Office. These transectionaryand governmentpositions were the dispensations of Jacobin patronage.They were rewards for the 9-10 August, 1792 and 31 May-2 June, 1793.

48. See E. Labrousse, "Voies nouvelles vers une histoire de la bourgeoisie occidentale aux 18e et 19e siecles (1700-1850),"Relazioni: Storia Moderna, International Congress of Historical Sciences,Rome, 1955 (Florence, 1955), 367-96; Daumard, La bourgeoisieparisienne. For the seventeenthand early eighteenthcenturies, see PierreGoubert, Beauvais et les beauvaisisde 1600a 1730 (Paris, 1960).

49. FerdinandBrunot, Histoire de la languefranqaise des originesa 1900, (Paris,1937), IX, 712-17.

50. The best known definitions of "sans-culotte"as laboring producer were by J.-B. Vingtemier, "...he is useful; he knows how to plough a field, forge and hammer, saw, file, tile a roof, make shoes, and shed the last drop of his blood for the preservation of the Republic"(in W. Markov and A. Soboul, Die Sansculottenvon Paris: Dokumentezur Geschichteder Volksbewegung, 1793-94,Berlin, 1957,p. 2) andJacques Hdbert in Le PereDuchesne, "sans-culottes are those who make the fabrics that clothe us, those who forge the metals and make the weapons that serve to defend the Republic." Productive and virtuous work was not exclusively manual or proletarian. Hdbert lauded the entrepreneurialluxury craftsman who renounced his sumptuary clientele and produced vital implements for the Republic (ibid, no. 339) and affirmed that bourgeois who "arefathers to their workers.. .content themselves with honest and modest profits, and do not seek to amass immense riches" can also be "sans-culottes."(ibid.)

51. Texts expressing the socio-civic expansiveness of this axial meaning abounded in 1792-94; the following are some sectionary examples. In May, 1793 the cannoneers of the Rdunionsection defined themselves to the National Convention: "Webelong to that useful and industrious class that does not feed its families from the odious revenues of speculation and hoarding, but from the modest profits of craftsmanship and honest trade."(B.V.C. ms. 118,fols. 64-65.) A petition to the Convention from the Sans-culottes section in September, 1793 declared: "Each individual in the Republic must devote his intelligence and his muscles to its welfare."(B.N. Lb40 2140.) In August, 1792, during the selection of electors, Andrd-Louis Caillouet - master sculptor and future revolutionary commissioner - advised the primary assembly of the Arsenal section: .. .a moderateis moredangerous than an avowedaristocrat. A moderateis a cowardlyman, who secretelyhates the People.. .do not nominatethose wealthy men, for veryfew of themare prepared to serveyour interests. A worker,an artisan,or simplya just manwhatever his profession,is preferable. (A.N. F7* 2505, f. 122) In his "Instructionpatriotique et nationale,"Louis Collignon-Dumont, publicist and militant of the Lombards section, stated that "in general, the bourgeois, the farmer, the worker, and the artisan"are rarely "aristocrats."(Brit. Mus. F. 493 2.) The three sections of the FaubourgSaint- Antoine petitioned the Convention in July, 1793 for a comprehensive law on public instruction: ...we hope to find therethe meansto providethe farmer,nourishing father of the Republic,with techniquesthat will simplifyhis operationsand increase their productivity, that will allowthe 'artiste' [mastercraftsman], the soul of commerce,to perfecthis craft,and the workerhis talent.(Markov and Soboul, Dokumente,p. 92) REVOLUTIONARY PARIS 109

Amongthe five chief officials of these sectionswho presentedthe petitionwere Noel Suchet andAlexandre Gillet-Ducoudray. Suchet was chief administrator of the Hospitalfor Abandonned Childrenand supervisorof its curriculum;he had been a memberof the Popincourtsection's civil committeesince 1790and a deputyto the InsurrectionaryCommune. (A.N. Fib II Seine, 18; F7 4587, dos. Barry;F30 141;Almanac national, 1793;F. Braesch,La Communedu 10 aoait1792. Etudesur 1'histoirede Parisdu 10juin au 2 decembre1792, [Paris,1911], p. 262.) Gillet-Ducoudrayhad been a notary'sclerk until 1789;from them, he lived on inheritance(he ownedthe buildingof his residence)and salariesof sectionaryoffices. In 1792-94,he was a principalleader of the assemblyand popularsociety of the Quinze-Vingtssection. (A.N. F7 4725,dos. Gillet-Ducoudray;F7 4635, dos. Castille;A.P.P. Aa 220, fol. 472.) Thesemen were "sans-culottes"not by manuallabor or poverty,but by efficaciousmilitancy and social utility. Jean-HenriHassenfratz was a distinguishedyoung chemist and engineer; he hadbeen director of Lavoisier'slaboratory and in 1793-YearII wasan administratorof warmateriel in the Ministry of Warand a directorof armsmanufactures for the Committeeof PublicSafety. He was also a principalmilitant of the Faubourg-Montmartresection - presidentof the civil committee, 1792-93,deputy to the InsurrectionaryCommune, frequent officer of the generalassembly. F4ucationfor productive utility was the centraltheme of his "Reflexionssommaires sur l'lducation publique"of 1793(B.H.V.P. 509 625): The institutionof civic festivalsis an excellentmetaphysical idea... .Theywere useful to the peoples of Antiquity,who did not havebetween them relationsas intimateas those betweenthe peoples of Europe,and who lackedprinting and postalservices that can propagateideas almostinstantly. But among a commercial,manufacturing and agrarianpeople surroundedby other industrious populations,take heed that our neighbors do notorganize their industry and destroy our manufactures andtrade while we are organizingcivic festivals.The most splendid"festival" that one could give to the FrenchRepublic would be to organizepublic education in artsand trades,to give impetus to nationalindustry, activity to factoriesand trade, and thereby to destroyforever tyranny, intriguers, and all the seeds of divisivenessthat exist amongus. Indisputably bourgeois, Hassenfratz was also, by his civic labors, an excellent "sans-culotte" to the revolutionarycommissioners of the Faubourg-Montmartre:"During the two yearsof his residencein the section,citizen Hassenfratz has neverceased to provehimself a truedemocrat and a good republican, by his speeches and by his conduct." (A.N. F7* 2482, minutes for 14 vent6se and 24 thermidoran II; F7 4739, dos. Hassenfratz.) As a final example of self-definitional expansiveness,in November,1793 the revolutionarycommittee of the Gravillierscastigated the former censitary elite of the section for having been opposed to " 'sans-culotte'bourgeois doing guard service with them" in 1789-92. (A.N. F7 4706, dos. Festuaux.)

52. Encyclopedieou dictionnaireraisonne des Sciences,des Arts et des Metiers,XVII, 648 (Paris, 1778). 'Manufactory:'place where several workers are occupied in thesame sort of production(ibid, XX, 103) 'Worker'["ouvrier"]: refers generally to any artisanwho laborsin any trade.(ibid, XXIV,216.) 'Work:'daily activityto which man is condemnedby need, and to whichhe also owes his health, his subsistence,his equanimity,his commonsense, andperhaps even his virtue(ibid, XXXIV,46). 'Towork:' to occupyoneself with some productiveactivity, to makesomething or performa task that requireseffort [peines]and labor (ibid, XXXIV,49) None of these basic definitions of commodity production distinguished between the employing master and his journeymen, apprentices and laborers. Within the eighteenth century Parisian economy, masters of production - even large-scale entrepreneurs - had virtually all "puttheir hands to the matter"as apprentices and journeymen. In the language of the Encyclopedia and in that of the "sans-culotterie,""industry" and "work"were practically co-terminous; both words had intensely moral significance. In "sans-culotte"ideology, work established the validity of privateproperty. But their conception of propertywas not strictlyLockean, for private property wasnot an absoluteright. By articlenineteen of the MontagnardConstitution of 1793,property couldbe confiscated(with indemnity) in thename of "publicnecessity;" the properties of "dmigres, hoarders,speculators, and convicted counter-revolutionaries were systematically confiscated and transformedinto publiccapital. Perhaps the most radicalstatement for limitationof property rightwas madeby the Sans-culottessection on 2 September,1793: "private property has no 110 journal of social history just basis other than the extent of physical needs." (B.N. Lb40 2140.) Sans-culotte and Jacobin demands for limitations of property rights mostly aimed at commercial or agrarian - and not manufacturing - holdings.

53. In Paris, the institutional grid of surveillance and policing was tighter in 1792-94 than at any other period of the eighteenth century. The "cartesde sdrete"and the numerous laws defining suspects were intended and used as instruments for "transformationalpolicing" of the plebeian classes by sectionary and Municipal authorities. In the Year II the Jacobin State and the Paris Municipality developed a generous system of poor relief; the Janus-face of that generosity was the most draconianlegislation against begging and vagabondagein the history of French criminal law. In the "Lawfor the Extirpation of Mendicancy"(15 October, 1793), the Convention decreed that second offenders would be imprisoned at labor for one year, third offenders for two years, and fourth offenders - deported to penal labor in Guyana for a minimum of eight years (J. Duvergier,Collection complete des Loix, decrets,ordonnances, reglements et avis---de 1788 a 1824, Paris, 1824-25, VI, 283-88).

54. The internecine sectionary conflicts of 1793 were largely struggles for dominance within the ranks of the Parisianbourgeoisie, and sequels to the unresolved antagonisms of the censitary regime. The electoral corps was one of the most socially representativeand politically significant institutions in Paris until late 1793. The majority of electors were sectionary officials, and the composition of the corps reflected changes in sectionary power. The corps of 809 electors in 1791-92,the final year of the censitary regime and the Monarchy, was composed of the following main social groups: 171 artisans and commodity producers; 113men of the law; 99 merchants and tradesmen;97 persons of the "liberalprofessions, mostly clerics and educators; 81 wholesale merchants and commodity traders; 68 bureaucrats and functionaries; 55 rentiers. Of the 850 electors of September, 1792-YearII, 720 have been socially identified: 297 artisansand commodity producers; 137 retail merchants and tradesmen; 98 persons of the liberal professions; 59 bureaucrats;57 men of the law; 27 "menof letters;"only 25 wholesale merchantsand 11rentiers. (Charavay,Assemblee electorale de Paris, II andIII.) The post-10August, 1792 political ascent of producing bourgeois was also registered in the composition of the Commune (Braesch, La Communedu 10 aoat. .., pp. 245-63).

55. 'Chdnauxde la Section de l'Oratoirea ses concitoyens"(A.N. F7 4718,dos. Gaudet). Chdnaux was a former attorney at the "Chatelet"and a public defender after 1790. During the grocery riots of 25-26 February, 1793 he allegedly declared: "In truth, I am not shocked by the pillage; I believe that it has a moral purpose." (A.N. F7 4645, dos. Chenaux.)

56. "Dernier mot de la Section de Bondy aux Insouciants," 10 April, 1793 (B.N. Lb40 3228).

57. Pierre Jault, "Adresseaux franqais sur la n6cessite d'une prochaine r6union,"22 June, 1793 (B.N. Lb40 1740). Jault also insisted that only throughvictory by the Republic would the wealthy conserve any of their property.

58. B.V.C. ms. 118, fol. 57.

59. In the BonConseil section, as throughout Paris, the contingent for the Vendee was recruited by voluntary enlistment, with each volunteer promised 500 "livres."The "sans-culottes"gained control of the assembly on 7 May and on the 10th, to pay for recruitment, the assembly and revolutionarycommittee levied a forced loan of 150,000 "livres"on the rich of the section. The committee instructed several dozen of them to pay fixed sums in three installments, the first due within forty-eighthours, the second within a week, and the third within a month. It threatened to declare "suspects"those who defaulted and to confiscate and auction their possessions. On 22 May, the assembly justified this coercion of the wealthy: Recruitmenttime completelyunmasked them; their cowardlyegotism was revealedin all its nudity.. .Theywanted to ruinthe recruitmentat its inception;they wantedto paralyzeit [by not contributing](A.N. C 255, plq. 482, fol. 2) REVOLUTIONARY PARIS 1l1

Severalpersons who delayedpayment were disarmed or arrestedby 2 June;many others were incarceratedas suspectsafter the Lawof 17 September("Rapport.. .des Commissaires.. .20 germinalan HI, B.N. Lb40 1733).Most of the "rich"on whom this loan was levied were of mercantileor rentierincome. The revolutionarycommissioners - almostall of whom were incarceratedas terroristsin 1795- werenot "menof the people"waging class war.Eight were involvedin productionand five weremasters or entrepreneurs:J.-B.-A. Leprince, president of the committeein May-June,master shoemaker with twelve workers in 1790-91;J.-B. Cambrier, ribbonand braid manufacturer with ten workers;Joseph Wabe, shoemaker with two workers; Charles-Antoineand Louis-FrancoisLamotte, sons of one of the majorfabric manufacturing familiesof the regionthose enterpriseemployed an averageof 97 workersin 1790-91(A.N. F30 127,doss. Leprince,Cambrier, Wabe, Lamotte; "Rapport .. .20 germinalan HI). Leprince defendedthe requisitionalpolitics of the committee,from prison in the YearII: Thegeneral assembly should remember our situationthen: urgent requirements for the Vendee;the volunteersrefusing to marchwithout receiving 500 'livres'each... andnot a 'sou'in the warchest; extraordinaryrevenues were absolutelynecessary (A.N. F7 4774/19,dos. Leprince;F7 4663, dos. Dautancourt;F7 477513,dos. Sarrazin). 60. "Projetd'adresse a la Conventionnationale," UHomme-Arm6 (Marais) section, late 1793 (B.N. Lb40 1946).

61. On Lebrun,see my "Justicesof the Peace of RevolutionaryParis," pp. 185-86.

62. On Blandin,see ibid, pp. 186-87.

63. On Laugier,see ibid, pp. 199-203.

64. A.N. F7 4774/35,dos. Marlee;F7 4775/32,dos. Toupiolle;Brit. Mus. F. 119117. Antoine Marleewas neitherbourgeois in 1789-92,nor plebeian.His careerwas socially dynamic.In 1771,he had immigratedfrom Tournay(Nord) to the Faubourgde Bondyand the atelierof a relativefrom previous immigration. Aged thirty-three in 1789,he wasthen a sculptorof statuary and studentat the Academy.In the summerof 1792he was electedpolice commissionerat a salaryof 3000 "livres,"the highestfor all sectionoffices. Afterrelease from imprisonment as a terroristin 1795,he was re-appointedpolice commissionerby the Directory.In April, 1800 he was promotedby the Consulateto the very well-paid rank of peace officer of the "arrondissement"(A.N. AD I 87; Fib 102, liasse "commissairesde police; F7 3271).Ch6naux, Jault,Leprince, Lebrun, Blandin, Laugier and Marleeformed almost a social microcosmof the "sans-culotte"leadership: two master-merchantsof production;a merchant;two skilled craftsmen;an attorney;a professionaladministrator. 65. E. Labrousse,"Les histoires sociales dAlbert Soboul," Annales historiques de la Revolution francaise 54 (1982):527-36.

66. See Reinhard,Nouvelle histoire de Paris, part I; idem, Contributionsa lhzistoire demographiquede la Revolutionfrangaise,(1962, 1965, 1970); Raymonde Monnier, Le Faubourg Saint-Antoine,1789-1815 (Paris, 1981)part I; Daniel Roche,Le peuple de Paris; essai sur la culturepopulaire au XVIIIesiecle (Paris, 1981),chs. 1-2.

67. From1792, section assemblies and clubs pressured the governmentto purgeits bureaucracies of OldRegime personnel and replace them with "sans-culottes." Soboul explained the pressures only by invokingclass hostilityor democraticidealism. In the Springof 1793,Xavier Audouin, adjointto Bouchotte(Jacobin Minister of War),circulated the sectionsurging them to denounce to him "counter-revolutionaries"and "falsepatriots" among the personnelof the ministry,and to recommendfor employment"sans-culottes" motivated by "ardentlove of the Nationjoined with necessaryknowledge." Audouin wanted especially to recruitfrom amongthe "hidden Cincinnatuses,William Tells, Catos, and Scaevolas" of Paris.(B.N. nouv.acq. franc.ms 2684, fols. 6-7.)The ministrywas soon delugedwith recommendationsand applications from heroes of republicanantiquity who had suddenlybecome reincarnate in Paris.See A.-P. Herlaut,Le 112 journal of social history colonelBouchotte, ministre de la guerreen lan II (Paris, 1946);and Church, Revolution and Red Tape,ch. 3.

68. On the careersof oppositionalrevolutionary "exclusifs" from the Directorythrough the Empire, see R.C. Cobb, "Note sur la repression contre le personnel sans-culottede 1795a 1801;'in Terreur et Subsistances(Paris, 1964), pp. 179-210;Isser Woloch, The Jacobin Legacy: The Democratic Movementunder the Directory(Princeton, 1970).

69. Soboul and fellow historians described the Conspiracy of the Equals as the resolution of contradictionsthat had supposedly underminedthe "sans-culotte"movement - populardemocracy versus revolutionary authority, social egalitarianism versus preservation of private property - and as a genuine,organized political force. See the following:Babeuf et les problemesdu babouvisme:Colloque international de Stockholm(Paris, 1963); Claude Mazauric, Sur Babeuf et la Conspirationpour l'tgalite (Paris,1976); Robert Legrand, Babeuf et ses compagnonsde route (Paris, 1981). For similar, if slightly more cautious, histories in English, see Martyn Lyons, Franceunder the Directory(Cambridge, 1975) and R.B. Rose, GracchusBabeuf, The First RevolutionaryCommunist (Stanford, 1978). For a refutationof these epic interpretations,and an empirical study of relations between former "sans-culottes"and Jacobins, the Conspiracy, and the Directional regime, see my "Rdflexions sur la Conjuration des Egaux" Annales: Economies,Societes, CivilisationsXXIX (1974):73-106. Far from being a resolutionof contradictionsor an innovation, the Conspiracy was almost a laboratorycase of mimetic political behavior - protagonists re-enacting their own pasts.

70. Franqois Furet's writings on the Revolution give little evidence of research in Parisian sectionary documents of 1793-95, but there is a striking concordance between his conception of the "sans-culotte"regime and the conception of it manifested by Parisian thermidorians in the Year III: for both, that regime was one of apocalyptic demagogues, homicidal psychopaths, avaricious "ddracines,"delusional mediocrities, upstart tyrants from the "arriere-boutique,"the workbench or the scrivener'sdesk, and politicalbrigands. See La Revolutionfrancaise, vol. II (Paris,1966) and Interpreting the FrenchRevolution (Cambridge, 1981). Similar imagery of the "sans-culotte"regime is conveyed by Richard Cobb's later works on the Revolution - an ironic affinity that neither Cobb nor Furet would wish to acknowledge. See The Police and the People,Reactions to the FrenchRevolution, and Paris and its Provinces1792-1802 (London, 1975). In their respective accounts of the Year II, one frequently has the impression, by tone and content, of readingavatars of EdmundBurke. Denigratory"socio-pathology" of "sans-culottes" and Jacobins may be once again a fashionable Tory pastime on both sides of the Channel, but it is not history of the Parisian Revolution.

This essay originated in a paper delivered to a session on the scholarly work of Albert Soboul in the February 1984 conference of the Consortium on RevolutionaryEurope at Duke University. An abridged version of this essay is in the 1984 volume of the Consortium'sproceedings, with comments by Lynn Hunt and Jeffrey Kaplow. I thank the editors of that volume for permission to reprint. For their critical reading of the essay, I wish to thank Christine Gros, John Gillis, Patrice Higonnet, Peter Linebaugh and Isser Woloch.