The Aristocratic Resurgence 329
Michelet it was brought on by centuries of misery and oppression of the common
people. Others, contrariwise, both Marxists and non- Marxists, have seen it as the
outcome of the growing prosperity, wealth, education, ambition, and self-
confidence of the French middle classes. Talleyrand attributed it in the last analysis
to human vanity, of which he thought the French had more than their share. For
Burke the actions of the French in 1789 were “an unforced choice, a fond election
of evil,” having no more compelling cause than human perversity itself, a vast
enough cause, to be sure. For Pope Pius VI, a contemporary, the Revolution was
another outbreak, which he compared to Jansenism and Calvinism, in the long
history of menaces to true religious faith. Other Catholics, including Pius VII,
have been less negative toward it. Various modern writers, usually seizing upon
some of the insights of Tocqueville, or agreeing with Taine that the Revolution
arose from a fanatical commitment to abstract ideas, have seen in it an anticipation
of the totalitarian state.
Recently in France there has been much interest in demographic studies, and
the Revolution has been attributed to the rapid increase of population in the eigh-
teenth century, which raised the pressure of people on the land, under existing
conditions of agriculture and alternative employments, and produced a population
with a very high proportion in the younger, bolder, and more restless age- groups.
The population of France did increase from eighteen or nineteen to twenty- five or
twenty- six millions between 1700 and 1789, and growth in England, Italy, and
other countries was in the same ratio. Professor Godechot of Toulouse, who favors
this explanation, half humorously attributes the Revolution of the Western World
to the discovery of America, finding a certain elegance in relating these two “capi-
tal steps in the history of mankind.”^1 His argument is as follows: Population in-
creased because improvements in nutrition, through the growing use of foods
originating mainly in America, such as sugar, potatoes and Indian corn (the latter
used to fatten poultry and livestock) allowed greater numbers to survive, especially
among the poor; but though they survived they did not live well, many remaining
underemployed, while meanwhile new discoveries of gold in Brazil, and improve-
ments in silver mining in Spanish America, by increasing the European money
supply drove up the price level at a time when wages lagged. The long trend of
rising prices, with low wages, contributed to the prosperity of the bourgeoisie and
the more substantial farmers, and the bourgeoisie was further benefited by the
growth of foreign and colonial trade; but the swelling numbers of landless or
nearly landless peasants, of unskilled and unemployed workers, and of paupers and
vagrants, built up the mass discontent of which the revolutionary leaders were to
make successful use.
Of all these explanations it may be said that they explain too little and too
much. Some characterize the course of modern history as a whole. Others make it
understandable that there should have been a great disturbance or convulsion at
1 J. Godechot, La Grande Nation: l ’expansion révolutionnaire de la France dans le monde, 2 vols.
(Paris, 1956), I, 32–37. For more detailed analysis of effects of price and wage movements see C.
Labrousse, La crise de l ’ économie française à la fin de l ’ancien régime (Paris, 1944).