The Coming of The French Revolution

Lefebvre's account of the coming of the French Revolution has stood the test of time, and is just as important now as when it came out in the 1950s. Lefebvre perceptively identifies not one, but four separate revolutions which built upon each other and created what we now call the French Revolution. He clearly shows that the nobles began the revolt in an attempt to gain more power over the king. The revolution quickly took a different turn when the bourgeois jumped in in an attempt to gain some power for themselves, and plumetted into chaos when the general populace and peasants appropriated the revolution for themselves. As far as describing the different streams flowing together to form the Revolution, Lefebvre succeed's brilliantly. Unfortunately, there are several problems which prevent this from being a great introduction to the French Revolution. First, Lefebvre is not always a clear writer. This may be because it is translated, but it is certainly hard to follow from time to time. Second, he assumes a detailed knowledge of the philosophical and political situation at the time of the Revolution. If you don't already have an adequate knowledge of this, it'll be a little tough to follow. The most annoying problem, though, is the vast number of names Lefebvre throws around. He constantly says so-and-so joined such-and-such a group or did such-and-such a thing, and he seems to think that we will realize that this is somehow important. Unfortunately, most of the time I had no idea who the people he named were. I know the major figures (Robespierre, La Fayette, Danton, etc.), but he names tons of minor figures I have never heard of assuming I know who they are and what their significance are, which is very frustrating. The same is true of places. I know the major locations, but in many of his descriptions of where things were happening he refers to many small towns that we can hardly be expected to know the locations of. The books is in dire need of a map which labels the cities/towns he refers to. The Coming of the French Revolution is certainly a good book, and is well worth reading. I would definitely recommend starting somewhere else if you want an introduction to the topic, though.

The Coming of the French Revolution, by Georges Lefebvre is one of the most informative works on the beginning stages of the French Revolution. Lefebvre argues that there was not just one revolution during 1789, but actually four distinct and separate revolutions. First, was the aristocratic revolution. In this revolution, Lefebvre makes it clear that the goal of the aristocracy is to restore their original powers. Second, was the bourgeois revolution. The bourgeois mainly sought equality. The third and fourth revolution, consisted of the popular and peasant revolutions. The economic crisis and food shortages is what drove these two revolutions. Through each revolution Lefebvre provides an in-depth analysis for the causes of each revolution and the actions the people undertook. The most exciting passages of the books includes Lefebvre's depiction of the storming of the Bastille, the women's march in Paris, and the Tennis Court Oath. Lefebvre's way with words made it impossible not to sympathize with the masses. In addition to this, while reading the book one gets a sense that the amount of blood that was eventually spilled was inevitable. The beginning stages of the revolution is what carved the French Revolution into a perpetual revolution, where nothing but time could end it. I recommend this book to anyone searching for a short book on the main causes of the French Revolution. This book served me well and clarified many questions I had surrounding this bloody revolution.

This was required reading for a graduate course in the history of the French Revolution. Georges Lefebvre's life was spent studying peasant life before and during the French Revolution and writing about "history from below." In his seminal book The Coming of the French Revolution, he essentially divided the Revolution into "four acts" which were played out by the revolts of the aristocracy, bourgeoisie, the urban masses, and finally the peasants; ultimately culminating in the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Lefebvre's analysis of the composition and concerns of France's social classes, nobility, bourgeoisie, and peasants, and their role in the prelude to the Revolution was most illuminating. He masterfully used his extensive years of research to lucidly explain how the Revolution essentially occurred in four phases. Although other countries in Europe had a similar social strata, Lefebvre agreed with Alexis De Tocqueville that reform came more peaceably to those countries than it did in France. Both Lefebvre and Tocqueville noted that one of the leading factors that led to the French Revolution was its oppressive tax burden on the peasants and the unfair socio-economic structure wherein the Church and nobility were exempt from taxation. Since the French monarchs desired to rule "absolutely," they successfully kept the aristocracy and Church members from utilizing their traditional desires to exercise any political control that would rightfully be theirs, as in other European countries, by making them tax exempt. This focused all political power in the hands of the monarch, which he controlled through his royal counsel. "The result was that most direct taxes were paid by persons lacking the status or influence to bargain with the king's officials, and that the king's government could never raise by direct taxes a revenue at all proportionate to the real wealth of the country, or to its legitimate needs" (10 note1). Recognizing this tax imbalance during France's financial crisis because of its vast expenditures in support of the American Revolution as well as the usual tremendous fiscal waste at court exploded the national debt, Louis XVI's finance minister, Calonne, in August 1786, recommended a drastic action that became a major factor in bringing about the Revolution. Calonne's plan was to lessen the tax burden on the peasants, raise taxes on the aristocracy, and retire the nation's debt, by selling off manorial properties possessed by the Church. When presented with this plan, the Aristocracy made demands of their own which precipitated what Lefebvre described as the "Aristocratic Revolution." "The aristocracy was willing to promise a subvention in return for political concessions, namely, the examination of accounts, i.e., a right to control the central power, and the transfer of local administration to provincial assemblies in which the aristocracy would master" (27). Not willing to acquiesce to the aristocrats' demands, Louis

In my study of revolutions I have always been interested in two basic questions- what were the ideas swirling around prior to the revolution that influenced people to see the need for revolution and the related question of how those ideas played out in the struggle for power. The study of the French Revolution most clearly presents those two phenomena in all their manifestations. Professor Lefebvre was a well-known and in his time a pre-eminent, if not the pre-eminent bourgeois historian of the French Revolution. I have reviewed his major general work on the French revolution elsewhere. Here, in this shorter work, he presents the events of 1789 as they unfolded and an analysis of what they meant in the period immediately before the revolution when all hell was breaking loose in French society. If one can talk legitimately about a sociology of revolutions then Professor LeFebvre has dramatically vindicated such sociology by presenting all of the factors that goes toward such a study in the early period of the French revolutionary experience. Clearly the Old Regime, represented in the person of King Louis XI, was no longer capable of ruling in the old way and the `people' were no longer satisfied, for a myriad of reasons, with being governed under the premise of the divine right of kings. The struggle to turn from subjects of a monarch to citizens of a republic, a question of capital historic importance in human experience, finds its most dramatic expression in this revolution. Furthermore, vast segments of society from the liberal nobility and clergy to the nascent bourgeoisie to the working classes (the so-called sans culottes and other plebian urban elements) to the various layers of the peasantry each in their turn were willing to unite around that premise. As clearly, once each class (or part of a class) gained its ends it turned against further extension of the revolution and in the case of the nobility and clergy very shortly turned toward counterrevolution. Professor LeFebvre documents this trend very well, especially in the case of the peasantry which he had special knowledge of and charted throughout his academic career. This writer has set himself the task of trying to analyze and review each book of revolutionary experiences he considers on the basis of what lessons militant leftists can learn from the study of the old historical experiences. With that task in mind I was once again reminded by reading this book that the notion of the Popular Front as a political strategy has a lot longer history than in the France of the 1920's and 1930's when it was first formally introduced through by the French Socialist Party in an electoral alliance with the Left Radical bourgeois party. What do I mean by Popular Front? The theory of the popular front has been presented by forces such as the Socialist parties and later the Communist parties as a step in the direction of revolution. The premise of the popular front revolves around a belief th

Published in 1939 on the eve of WWII and the Vichy Regime (which burned 8,000 copies), Lefebvre's account of the event which initiated the modern era in the West remains the most accesible and readable of any work on the subject before or since. Lefebvre's Marxist analysis of the event (the dominant interpretation until recently) may appear archaic to contemporary readers. Nevertheless the work is a highly enjoyable analysis of the various sectors of French society and how they contributed to the Revolution. The flowery or arcane scholarly knowledge of later accounts pales before Lefebvre's engaging prose. All in all, a highly recommended work.