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REPRESENTATION WITHOUT REVOLUTION: POLITICAL REPRESENTATION AS DEFINED IN THE GENERAL CAHIERS Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/fh/article/15/2/159/627887 by guest on 29 September 2021 DE DOLEANCES OF 1789 ROBERT H BLACKMAN* When, in 1788, the French monarchy agreed to consult its subjects by summoning an Estates General, there was no consensus on what powers this body might have The summoning of the Estates General in 1789 caused widespread speculation as to its role and powers, and some of this speculation was quite radical.1 Lynn Hunt has asserted that many - if not most - of the third estate deputies came to the Estates General in May 1789 fully prepared to overthrow the traditional monarchy in favour of a parliamentary democracy wherein the king retained only executive power, or perhaps held a purely ceremonial role in governing. Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret has made similar claims for the Second Estate.2 At first it seems impossible to evaluate these claims. After all, more than 1,000 deputies attended the Estates General of 1789, and it would be impossible to attempt a description of their individual intentions and thus of whether or not they arrived with revolution in mind However, each deputy came not on his own authority to Versailles, but as the representative of a specific order and community. Each deputy or delegation carried a cabier de doleances, a document containing comprehen- sive instructions from his electors. These 'general' cabiers de doleances were • The author is Visiting Assistant Professor of History, Hampden-Sydney College, Hampden- Sydney, VA 23943 He wishes to thank Marjorie Beale and Ann Blair for their Insightful criticism of this work He would also like to thank Gall Bossenga, who commented on an earlier version of this paper, Richard Bonney, and the anonymous reviewers from French History Last, he would like to thank Timothy Tacken for his generosity in reading and commenting on multiple drafts of this paper A]] errors that remain are, of course, his own 1 For a selection of pamphlets from this period J Popkln and D. Van Kley, Tbe pre- Revolutionary debate, section 5 of The French Revolution Research Collection, general editor Colin Lucas (New York, 1990) See also J Egret, Tbe French Prerevolution, 1787-1788, trans W D Camp (Chicago, 1977) 2 L Hunt, "The "National Assembly"', Tbe French Revolution and tbe creation of modern political culture. I Tbe political culture of tbe Old Regime, cd K. Baker (Oxford, 1987), pp. 403- 15, G Chaussinand-Nogaret, Tbe French nobility in tbe eighteenth century, trans. W Doyle (Cambridge, 1985), pp 145-67. See also M Fltzsimmons, 'New light on the aristocratic reaction in France', Fr Hist, 10 (1996), 418-31. C Oxford University Press 2001 French History, VoL 15 No 2, pp. 159-185 160 REPRESENTATION WITHOUT REVOLUTION drawn up in the assemblies which would send deputies directly to the Estates General.3 Moreover, the deputies came not as representatives in the modern sense of the word, but as bearers of the instructions of their electors, instructions meant to limit and regulate the political acts of their bearers. Upon receiving the cabier of his electors, each deputy swore an oath faithfully to present the grievances of his electors. In return, he was given a mandate, formal recognition of his ability to enter into binding agreements on the part of his electors. The mandates came in three basic kinds: first, there was the Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/fh/article/15/2/159/627887 by guest on 29 September 2021 general mandate, which granted the bearer powers to advise, remonstrate and consent as specified in the king's order convoking the Estates General. Second, communities could give more direct instructions to their deputies in the form of a special mandate which put emphasis on a specific task, but stopped short of disowning a deputy who found that circumstances prevented carrying out the electors' wishes. Third, the electors might give their deputy a binding or 'imperative' mandate, one which the deputy could not disobey without being disowned by his electors and replaced as their representative.4 As Ran Halevi points out, there was generally 'a peaceful division of tasks between the represented and their representatives The former enjoyed the prerogatives of remonstrance; the latter, the honors of the mandate. On the one hand, there was the voice of a community; on the other, the ambition of an individual.'5 In conveying the wishes of the electors, the cabiers recorded the desires of a large portion and remarkable cross-section of French elite at the end of the ancien regime.6 These cabiers, written in the same assemblies that elected the deputies, form a reliable source for analysing the relationship between the 3 In the case of the third estate, there had been a series of assemblies and elections to bodies which drafted cabiers for their regions The general cabiers were those of the last electoral body, which had to evaluate the regional cabiers given to it and draft a formal document which would represent the best interests of the entire area it represented * Lettre du roi pour la convocation des fitats gfrieraux a Versailles le 27 avril 1789, in Archivesparlementairesde 1787a 1860,premiereserie (1787a 1799), ed M J Mavidai and M E Laurent, 2nd edn (1879-1913), i 543 (24 Jan 1789) [henceforth abbreviated as AP] Reglement fait par le roi pour I'execution des lettres de convocation du 24 Janvier 1789, AP i 544, 549 On the nature of the mandates B Hyslop, Guide to tbe general cabiers of 1789 (New York, 1968), pp 99-100 Illustrative of the special mandate is the cabier of the third estate in the s6necbausee Albert, in which the deputies were required to demand a vote by head, but told not to retire if this was refused, accepting instead the decision to vote by order AP i 704-5 5 R. Halevi, 'The monarchy and the elections of 1789',/ Mod Hist, 60, suppl (September 1988), S93 In a wonderful example of the priority of the mandate over the deputy, Halevi cites the elections in Lyon, in which the election of workers, rather than guild-masters, to the local assembly of the third estate did not result in a noticeably more radical cabier Thus, he reasons, the selection processes of men and ideas were quite separate ibid S94-S95 * Halevi estimates that roughly 105,000 to 110,000 individuals took part in the highest level of the elections of 1789 Of the men involved in the elections, the third estate represented 42 per cent, the clergy 34 per cent and the nobility 24 per cent ibid. S87-S88 Tackett notes that the cabiers for the third estate generally reflect the opinions of a 'relatively homogeneous group of urban, non-privileged notables', and 'the non-peasant "notables" within the Third Estate, and particularly those commoner elites living in urban settings' T Tackett, 'Use of the "cahiers de doleances" of 1789 for the analysis of regional attitudes', Mil icole Fr Rome, 103 (1991), 30, 33 ROBERT H BLACKMAN l6l electing bodies and their representatives, as well as the expected relationship between the forthcoming Estates General and the monarchy. Keith Baker has claimed, however, that the cabiers had little importance in determining the actions of the deputies. He writes that the 'French Revolution of 1789 was, first and foremost, a revolution of the deputies against the conditions of their election', and that this revolution required 'a dramatic repudiation' of their powers as given in the cabiers de doleances? However, Baker does not make it immediately clear how far and in what way the deputies Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/fh/article/15/2/159/627887 by guest on 29 September 2021 exceeded the powers given them by their constituents and recognized by the king. In order to evaluate the claims of Hunt, Chaussinand-Nogaret and Baker, we must examine the concepts of political representation and participation found in the general cabiers de doleances of 1789, the documents created by the assemblies convoked to elect the deputies who would attend the Estates General in Versailles. Only then will we be in a position to declare whether or not the deputies arrived ready to create a constitutional monarchy, or if in seeking a constitutional monarchy they exceeded the desires of their constituents. While there exist many excellent studies of the cabiers, none specifically addresses the relationship envisaged in them between the deputies and their monarch, or explores the forms proposed in them for future meetings of the Estates General.8 A careful survey of the instructions given to the deputies by their electors reveals the outlines of the reforms envisaged by a significant portion of the French elite in 1789. Almost all of the cabiers surveyed here discussed the powers of the Estates General and sought to define its future role. However, one finds through a careful analysis of the cabiers that the electoral assemblies - and by inference the urban elite from which they were drawn - envisaged a reworking of political representation within the late eighteenth- century monarchy while largely preserving the prerogatives of the monarch. The issues examined here - the role of the Estates General in legislative and financial matters, the need to increase the accountability of royal officials, the 7 K M. Baker, Inventing the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1990), p 244 A similar interpretation can be found in W Doyle, Oxford history of the French Revolution (Oxford, 1990), p 118 8 Those that address the political content of the cabiers include T Tackett, Religion, revolution, and regional culture in eighteenth century France (Princeton, N J , 1986), pp 146-56, 251-75; C Tilly, Tbe Vendie (Cambridge, 1964), pp 177-86, and G V Taylor, 'Revolutionary and nonrevolutionary content in the cabiers of 1789 an interim report', Fr Hist Stud, 7 (1972), 497-502.
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