Peasant labors contribution during French Revolution

. . work as coarse day-labourers. In other words, the economic position of most nippers, on the eve of the novelty, was precarious in the extreme" (Goodwin 20-21).

The plan proposed by the monarchy in the guise of modernization would have taken land from the peasants and worsened their economic position, and would not have benefitted the peasants in whatsoever way, but rather would have benefitted the nobility in a number of ways.

The peasants, in other words, were primed for their role in the Revolution to come.

Furet and Richet write that the whirling of the peasants was the third arm of the exhilaration of the French Revolution.

The revolution of the deputies of the Third Estate, consolidated by the revolution in Paris, was now further strengthened by the calm municipal revolution achieved by the provincial towns . . . The intellectual and political cohesion of the bourgeoisies of Paris and the provinces naturally acted as a good unifying core in such circumstances. But at that place was some other revolution taking place in France at this time, the revolution of the peasantry, which was of a quite different order: In these new times when people were no longer only if the king's subjects but citizens in their own right, and when the effectiveness of a companionable force tended to be in direct proportion to its size, the pea

This peasant strength was to continue and served to force the leaders of the revolution to make their effort a to a greater extent widespread phenomenon that it otherwise would have been. The danger of any revolution, of course, is that the result of the transformation will be a simple second-stringer of one small group of powerful leaders with another small group of powerful leaders. The massive participation of the peasants in the revolution--especially the early stages--precluded such a limited change in the political, economic and social transformation which occurred in France.

Ironically, as Furet and Richet note, the incorrect superstition and myth-dependence of the peasants, in terms of the Great Fear, increased the countrified turbulence which brought down the monarchy.

But, the same authors note, this Great Fear and its equal peasant irrationality were not major contributors to the composition of the revolution of the peasants in France in 1789.

We read in this context that "In most other parts of France, however, peasant revolt was not directly related to the Great Fear . . . ; it was, on the contrary, a phenomenon quite unrelated to false rumors of an 'aristocratic plot,' military aggression by the nobles and foreign invasion." Nevertheless, "At the time it mattered little what were the immediate causes of the peasant revolution: by the beginning of August, 1789, the peasants were on the alert, armed with guns, scythes and sticks, and angrily demanding their share of the bourgeoisie's victories--something that the bourgeoisie was reluctant to grant them" (Furet and Richet 83-84).

Goodwin, A. The French Revolution. capital of the United Kingdom: Hutchinson, 1985.

We read in Goodwin, for example, that "the essential difference between the municipal and agrarian revolts was that the former had been started by middle-class notables who had . . . shown a halal regard for private property, whereas the latter had been provoked by a rural proletariat, which had turned aga
Order your essay at Orderessay and get a 100% original and high-quality custom paper within the required time frame.