Western Civilization - History Of European Society

The French Revolution and Napoleon, 1789–1815 399

Before the Constitution of 1791 took effect, an-
other dramatic event changed the course of the French
Revolution. On June 20, 1791, Louis XVI fled for the
eastern frontier. A postmaster recognized the king, and
at the village of Varennes the National Guard arrested
him. Louis XVI returned to Paris as a prisoner. “There is
no longer a king in France,” he said. His flight to
Varennes led to talk of abolishing the monarchy and
creating a republic. For more than a year after the king’s
arrest, however, the revolutionary government allowed
an aristocrat to continue publishing a royalist newspa-
per on his behalf.

Europe and the Revolution

The arrest of Louis XVI accelerated the growth of

counterrevolutionary opinion. The most dramatic ex-

pression of this in France had been emigration from the

country. The émigrés (those who fled) had been led by

the king’s younger brother and future successor, the

count of Artois, who left in July 1789. Each major event

of the revolution increased the number of émigrés. The

total ultimately reached 104,000. Adding twenty-five

thousand people who were deported (chiefly nonjuring

priests), 2 percent to 3 percent of the population left

France. Most émigrés came from the third estate, but

priests and aristocrats fled at higher rates (see table

21.1). In contrast, counterrevolutionary emigration to

Canada during the American Revolution took 3 to 5

percent of the population. The émigrés concentrated in

Koblenz and other towns near the border where they

sought assistance from the crowned heads of Europe,

aided rebellions in southern France, and built ties to

nonjuring priests, especially in western France where a

bitter civil war would soon be fought.

The émigrés got little help at first. European opin-

ion was divided, but it was generally more favorable to

the revolution than to émigré nobles. The English poet

DOCUMENT 21.2

The Revolution and Women’s Rights

Olympe De Gouges’s Declaration of the Rights of

Woman, 1791

Olympe de Gouges (1748–93) was the illegitimate daughter of a

provincial butcher. She ran away with a soldier at age sixteen and

wound up as a writer in Paris. She supported the revolution and

founded a club for women that Robespierre closed. Her opposition to

Robespierre and her opposition to the execution of Louis XVI sent her to

the guillotine in 1793. Compare the words of her articles with the simi-

lar ones in the Declaration of the Rights of Man.

Man, are you capable of being just? It is a woman who

poses the question; you will not deprive her of that right

at least. Tell me, what gives you sovereign empire to op-

press my sex?

1. Woman is born free and lives equal to man in her
   rights....


2. Liberty and justice consist of restoring all that be-
   longs to others; thus, the only limits on the exercise of the
   natural rights of woman are perpetual male tyranny; these
   limits are to be reformed by the laws of nature and
   reason....


3. No one is to be disquieted for his very basic
   opinions; woman has the right to mount the scaffold; she
   must equally have the right to mount the rostum.

The Committee of General Security Rejects

Women’s Rights, 1793

Should women exercise political rights and meddle in af-

fairs of government? To govern is to rule the common-

wealth by laws, the preparation of which demands

extensive knowledge, unlimited attention and devotion, a

strict immovability, and self-abnegation.... Are women

capable of these cares and of the quality they call for? In

General, we can answer no....

[W]omen’s associations seem dangerous. If we con-

sider that the political education of men is at its begin-

ning, that all its principles are not developed, and that

we are still stammering the word liberty, then how

much more reasonable is it for women, whose moral

education is almost nil, to be less enlightened concern-

ing principles?

Gouges, Olympe de. Declaration of the Rights of Woman.1791.

Levy, Darline G., Applewhite, Harriet B., and Johnson, Mary D., ed.

Women in Revolutionary Paris, 1789–1795.Urbana: University of Illinois

Press, 1979.