of society—the clergy, the nobility, and the middle classes—were represented.
However, they met separately, something to which the bourgeois representa-
tives of the middle classes now objected. During the ensuing revolt the
delegates declared themselves to be the only true representatives of the people
living in France, and called their parliament the National Assembly of
Representatives of the French People. Furthermore, they swore an oath to
continue in session until a new constitution was established. Initially, the
monarchy was retained. Following on from the enlightened rationalist laws
which during the eighteenth century had led to the promotion of monarchies
over religious power, one of theWrst important acts of the 1789 National
Assembly was the reform of the Church. ConWscation and sale of Church land
along with the bishops’ and priests’ obligation to swear an oath of loyalty to
the government was intended to weaken the religious establishment. All these
measures led to a decline in the authority of the religious language which
hitherto was dominant. Revolutionaries, in contrast, retained for civic patri-
otism the language of classicism, a language whose prestige was not in doubt.
The constitutional monarchy, established in 1791, only remained in place
for a year. In the face of an increasingly radicalized revolution, the king fell in
1792 and was beheaded in 1793. France then became a republic. Thereafter,
Napoleon rose to becomeWrst consul in 1799. He eVectively concentrated all
power in his hands to the extent that in 1804 he was enthroned as emperor.
Between 1804 and 1814 Napoleon was to invade and rule over almost the
whole of continental Europe. In each country he introduced the reforms
of the French Revolution, principally an eYcient and centralized system of
administration and justice. The bureaucracies in place before the arrival of the
French were shown little respect in the new system and French administrators,
full of an innate sense of superiority, despised their administre ́s (subjects) as
primitive (Broers 1996: 263, 266–8). Through government, schooling and
propaganda based on the use of symbols—many of them derived from
the classical past—Napoleon promoted not only the expansion of the new
bureaucratic administration but also of the ideals of the French Revolution.
In the long term both were fundamental for the professionalization of
archaeology.
This situation endured until 1814 when Napoleon was forced to resign,
and after a brief attempt to govern France in 1815, he was exiled to the island
of St Helena. Napoleon’s death in 1821 did not constitute the end of the
importance of nationalism. The French Revolution had inspired the middle
classes throughout Europe and the Americas. Either through France’s con-
quests or as a reaction to them, civic ideas of national autonomy, unity, and
identity had even spread to countries whose states were not as solid as
France. In all of them diversity, tradition and/or dynastic loyalty were
The French Revolution 65