Ireland and the French Revolution

by Tom Crean

The French Revolution had an explosive international impact. Its echoes were felt from Poland to Haiti and led to a whole series of movements which sought to emulate the French example. European and world politics would never be the same again.

There are many reasons for this. In 1789 most European countries were still ruled by "absolute" monarchs who justified their role by the doctrine of the "divine right of kings". The feudal aristocracy though weakened still remained the dominant social class while the mass of the population were impoverished peasants. Democracy in the modern sense was virtually non-existent. So for an urban-based, popular royal revolt house in Europe, strip the nobility of its privileges and then establish a republic based on universal male suffrage was obviously staggering. But to fully understand the impact of the Revolution on Ireland and the relationship of the United Irishmen with France, it is necessary to first of all trace the course of events in France itself.

French society before the Revolution was formally divided into three "estates": the nobility, the clergy and the so-called "third estate" which included everyone else. The nobility and the clergy each owned vast tracts of land and were exempt from most forms of taxation. The monarchy in France and elsewhere in Europe during the 1700s were seeking to restrict the privileges of the first two estates, particularly in regards to taxation. This was because they were seeking to build large standing armies in their competition for territory. Britain and France in particular were locked in a struggle for colonial domination in the New World.

Within the Third Estate, the emerging social force was the bourgeoisie, a term which originally simply meant "urban dwellers". But by the 18th century, the bourgeoisie referred specifically to the merchants and bankers who had grown prosperous through the building of trading empires, manufacturers and the higher ranks of the professions and the civil service. In France, manufacturing was still concentrated in small guild workshops where a master craftsman employed journeymen and apprentices. Only in Britain had modern industrial production developed on a large scale and, even there, the bulk of the working class up until the mid 19th century were artisans and not industrial workers. In Paris, the smaller workshop masters and shopkeepers, along with the journeymen and apprentices, together formed the popular masses who played a key role in the development of the revolution. They were variously referred to as the "menu peuple" (ordinary people) or the "sans culottes" (those who didn't wear knee breeches, characteristic of the rich).

Of course, the vast majority of the Third Estate and of society were peasants. Serfdom by this stage was largely abolished in Western Europe and in France there was a substantial layer (a quarter of the total) who owned their land outright. Half, however, were sharecroppers who divided their crops on a 50/50 basis with their landlords, while the final quarter were landless laborers.

The 18th century was a period of economic growth when a small elite amassed huge fortunes. But it was also a century when the European population grew by over 50% and some historians have argued that the growth of the food supply did not keep pace. The consequence of this for ordinary people in growing urban areas like Paris who spent at least half their income on bread was a steady decline in living standards. When food shortages became acute as in the winter of 1788-9, the prospect of starvation loomed.

Causes of the French Revolution

So while the rich got richer, the poor were often poorer and the resulting sharpening of social tensions was a very important factor in causing the French Revolution. But there were a number of other specific causes. First of all, there was the increasing tension between the French king, Louis XVI, and the nobility because of the government's need to increase tax revenue. This financial crisis was exacerbated by French involvement in the American War of Independence against Britain. France was on the winning side but wound up in heavy debt to the banks.

Secondly, there was what the famous 19th century writer, Alexis de Tocqueville, referred to as a "crisis of rising expectations" among the French bourgeoisie. Historically, the bourgeoisie had used their wealth to buy their way into the nobility and the sale of noble titles became a lucrative source of revenue for the state. But this also caused resentment among the established nobility against these "upstarts" and after the middle of the 18th century, there was increasing restriction placed on bourgeois upward mobility. So an increasingly wealthy class felt that their social status did not correspond to their importance in society.

The other factor pushing French society towards revolution were the ideas of the Enlightenment. Writers like Voltaire and Rosseau were challenging the established dogmas of the old society. They reexamined philosophy, religion and politics and rejected all ideas which could not be rationally justified. In particular, they attacked the privileges of the nobility and the church as well as the doctrine of the "divine right of kings". Edmund Burke, the Anglo-Irish politician who wrote the most famous conservative attack on the French Revolution, singled out these "philosophes" as the cause of all the subsequent trouble.

Undoubtedly the popularization of the new thinking did play an important role, but the revolution was the result of a specific conjuncture as well as the longer term factors outlined above, especially the increasing social contradictions. In 1788, in one of the recurring standoffs between Louis XVI and the nobility, the king was forced to agree to the calling of the Estates General. This assembly of the representatives of the three estates had not met since 1614.

When the Estates General convened in May 1789, the crisis entered a new stage. The representatives of the Third Estate, chosen in assembly where all men had a vote and various grievances were aired, almost all bourgeois professionals. They were not prepared to simply be a rubber stamp in the nobility's dispute with Louis XVI. When the king appeared to threaten to dismiss the Estates General, the Third Estate constituted itself as a National Assembly and refused to disperse. The Parisian masses then rose up to defend the Assembly.

Constitutional Monarchy

Thus what began as a protest by the nobility on taxation became a revolution of the bourgeois backed up by the sans culottes. Meanwhile, the peasants rose up and burned the manor rolls which listed all their debts to the feudal landlords. The new National Assembly soon abolished the remaining feudal privileges of the nobility and clergy. They also issued on August 26, 1789 a Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen which reflected the ideals of the Enlightenment as well as echoing the American Declaration of Independence. These were also the values that inspired the early United Irishmen.

It is important to stress that in the first stage of the French Revolution which lasted through 1791, the French bourgeoisie did not seek to create a republic. Rather France was a constitutional monarchy modeled on Britain where the bourgeoisie had already established its social dominance in the 1600s. The Constitution of 1791 enshrined these aims. But before the ink was dry on this document, the revolution was already beginning to take a more radical turn.

There are several reasons for this. The most important was the resistance of the nobility to the new order. Unlike Britain, where the aristocracy by the 17th century had already "cleared the land" of peasants and to some extent transformed themselves into capitalist farmers managing sheep runs, the French Aristocracy still depended on taking the peasants for its livelihood. As George Rudé pointed out:

"The great majority [of nobles] though remaining in France... were never reconciled to the new order and, as a constant focal point of dissension, sullen resentment and suspicion, provoked the revolutionary authorities to take ever harsher and more vigorous measures to restrain their liberties and keep them in check." 1

Radicalization

The king whom the nobility had been fighting previously now became their primary ally. In June 1791, Louis was caught trying to escape France to join a royalist army abroad. This was a very disillusioning experience for many in the bourgeoisie. But the final decisive factor in radicalizing the situation was the outbreak of war between France and Austria in April 1792.

By this stage a clear division had emerged in the French bourgeoisie between those who wanted to "stop" the revolution and those who want to overthrow the monarchy and establish a republic. The republican wing through its political clubs like the Jacobins also actively developed an alliance with the sans culottes who want the reestablishment of the right to vote for all men - universal male franchise - which had been restricted since 1789.

Events were pushed along in the summer of 1792 as the war with Austria began going badly for France. The war also led to severe inflation making bread almost unaffordable and pushing the urban masses towards revolt. In August 1792, the "second revolution" occurs as the sans culottes surround the king's Paris residence. A republic is declared and in January 1793, Louis XVI is executed. The following month, Britain which had initially welcomed the French Revolution primarily because of the difficulties it caused her major international foe, declared war on the republic.

But having reestablished universal male suffrage, a further split in the republican bourgeoisie emerged. The more moderate wing, the Girondins, were hesitant about executing the king while the radicals of the Mountain, led by Robespierre, won the allegiance of the sans culottes by their determination on this point and also by championing the popular demands for a minimum wage and a maximum price on bread. This more radical wing seized power at the beginning of June 1793 after the sans culottes surrounded the National Convention - as the Assembly now called itself - and forced the "purging" of the Girondins.

The ascendancy of the Mountain marks the most radical phase of the French Revolution which lasts until July 1794 when Robespierre is in turn overthrown by more conservative forces. The "Year Two of the Republic" is remembered primarily for the Terror which the regime used against its opponents, symbolized by the guillotine. But what is often lost sight of is that, by this stage, France faced not only external enemies but also the internal civil war, particularly in the Vendée where a pro-royalist Catholic rebellion was actively aided by Britain. Most people killed during the Terror were killed during the suppression of the rebellions which physically threatened the existence of the republic. This, of course, does not alter the fact that it was a very brutal period. However, for many ordinary people in Paris, Year Two was remembered as the period when "liberty, equality and fraternity" came closest to being realized. This is primarily because Robespierre kept his word and brought in the minimum wage and the maximum on prices.

These measures may not seem so radical today but it reflected a degree of popular participation in political administration which was unprecedented. The role of the sans culottes in the Paris Commune (the city council) pointed towards the socialist program that the workers should rule society. But it was also unsustainable on the basis of the level of economic development which France had attained. The bourgeoisie needed the sans culottes as an ally in the fight against the enemies of the republic, external and internal. But having defeated these enemies, the need for this alliance - with all its potentially dangerous implications for the rule of property - was removed and the main wing of the bourgeoisie moved to reestablish "law and order". Elections on the basis of universal suffrage were not held again in France until 1848. On the other side, the sans culottes, a large force in Paris but a small minority of the population as a whole, were far too weak on their own to establish their rule over society.

In subsequent decades, the Year Two if the French Revolution became the model for social radicals including socialists. But the alliance between the radical bourgeoisie and the popular masses proved largely impossible to reestablish. The fight for democracy became increasingly the fight of the workers' movement, particularly in Britain where the Chartists emerged in the 1840s as the first mass workers' party in modern history. Their central demand was universal male suffrage in a classic bourgeois society where even after the Reform Act of 1832 only 14% of adult males had the right to vote.

Ireland

The United Irishmen as one of the many movements across Europe inspired by the French revolution went through a process of radicalization which mirrored the radicalization of the revolution itself. Initially, the organization demanded radical reform of the Irish political system including Catholic emancipation. It was certainly not committed at this stage to the establishment of an Irish republic through an insurrection against English Rule backed by French arms. The shift to the latter goals, as detailed in the introduction to this pamphlet, came as a result of the failure to secure fundamental reform - symbolized by the removal of Earl Fitzwilliam as Lord Lieutenant in February 1795 - as well as the pressure of external events, particularly Britain's declaration of war against France. The United Irishmen, allies of France, were now perceived as enemies of the British state and were treated as such.

But the other key factor in the radicalization of the United Irishmen was the spread of social republican ideas. Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man was the clearest statement of these ideas. The second part of this book calls for the redistribution of income, he provision of childcare benefits and ole age pensions. Again, these demands which anticipate the post-Second World War welfare state may not seem particularly revolutionary today. However, at the same time, they were viewed by conservatives as an assault on the "rights of property", on the very foundations of their social order. But it was precisely these social demands, along with the call for universal suffrage, which won the allegiance of artisans in Belfast and Dublin - the Irish sans culottes - to the United Irishmen. Hence an alliance of social forces quite similar to that which led to the radical republic of 1792-4 in France emerged in Ireland in the latter half of the 1790s. And as the ballad at the beginning of the article suggests, the United Irishmen sought to spread their ideas into Scotland and England where United Scotsmen and United Englishmen were established. These organizations also recruited heavily among artisan workers.

The French Connection

The other and more celebrated part of the connection between Ireland and France in this period was the attempt to organize a French military invasion to coincide with an insurrection here. Informal contacts between Irish radicals and French ruling circles existed from the early 1790s. However, a decisive change occurred in late 1795 when the leadership of the United Irishmen - in the process of reorganizing the movement - decided to send Wolfe Tone to France with the aim of securing a French commitment to send an army to Ireland. It is interesting to note that at least one historian, Marianne Elliott, who has written extensively on the connection between the United Irishmen and France, believes that part of the motivation in seeking French aid was fear that the Irish "lower orders" could not be controlled after a revolution:

"The United Irishmen would never consciously have encouraged catholic hopes of a reversal of the land settlement, or risked the possibility of a catholic revenge campaign against the protestant dispossessors. They were political rather than social reformers... and their insistence on the need for French military assistance stemmed as much from their fears of how the catholic lower classes would conduct themselves in a rebellion as from their desire for independence from English rule." 2

Tone arrived in France in February 1796, after a circuitous trip via America. He immediately made contact with the leading figures in the Directory, as the post-Robespierre government was known. Tone was very confident of French assistance because of the promises made by a French agent, William Jackson, who had gone to Ireland two years before. However, from the standpoint of the French government, no formal offer of support had ever been made. In general, their view was that military assistance should be given to foreign revolutionary movements once they had taken power. Tone insisted, however, that no rising would take place until the French arrived.

The Directory took Tone's proposals very seriously because their intelligence confirmed that a mood for revolution was indeed growing very rapidly in Ireland. They were also naturally keen on any plan which would weaken the position of Britain with whom they were still at war. The difficulty was that the French republic was fighting on more than one front and concentrating forces for an invasion of Ireland - especially given the very weak state of the French navy - was no easy matter.

Fortunately for Tone, he found an ally in Lazare Hoche, one of revolutionary France's most brilliant young generals. Hoche was certainly motivated by enormous personal ambition. His main rival was Bonaparte who at the end of 1799 was to overthrow the Directory and subsequently crown himself Emperor. But unlike many in the Directory leadership, Hoche was a committed republican and he wanted to see the Irish revolution succeed on principle.

Invasion

After many difficulties and delays, Hoche finally managed to assemble a force of 46 ships carrying 14,450 troops and over 41,000 weapons. A further force of 15,000 reinforcements was also being assembled. On December 16, 1796, the force sailed from Brest. The troops were "in high spirits, firmly convinced of a warm welcome in Ireland; they sang patriotic songs about the French releasing the Irish from bondage and seemed certain of victory." 3

If the troops had landed in Ireland, despite the fact that the United Irishmen had not been informed of the date or location of the invasion, victory was almost certain. The United Irishmen, especially in Ulster, were reasonably well armed, much of the government militia had taken the United oath and there were nowhere near enough regular troops to defeat both the French and the very large part of the population which would certainly have supported them.

However, due to a series of tragic accidents and blunders, there was no landing. The French fleet easily made it through the English naval blockade but Hoche's ship became separated from the others in a storm. Most captains of the other vessels had not been given clear instructions on where to land due to Hoche's desire to preserve maximum secrecy. Upon arriving in Bantry Bay, the remaining force, seeing no welcome from the shore - and with still no sign of Hoche - waited a couple of days, and returned to France.

After this fiasco, any further attempt to land a major force in Ireland were made even more complicated. Hoche died in 1797 and when Tone tried to persuade Bonaparte to lead a force to Ireland in early 1798, the latter decided to attack British interests by leading a campaign to Egypt instead. In the end, when rebellion in Ireland did break out, a small force was organized under Humbert, which landed in Killala, County Mayo, in August. But with the United Irishmen having been decisively defeated by this stage, this force had little hope of success and was rapidly defeated.

The strategic orientation of the United Irishmen towards a French invasion must be seen as a mixed blessing for the prospects of a successful Irish rebellion. Obviously, the near-success of December 1796 would seem to justify this orientation. Furthermore, the failure of Hoche's expedition, far from disheartening the United Irishmen actually contributed to the enormous growth of the movement in early 1797. Loyalists realizing all to well how near they had come to defeat were in a state of enormous panic.

But as 1797 wore on, the insistence of the leadership of the United Irishmen on waiting for another French landing probably squandered the best opportunity for a successful rebellion. For as the French failed to materialize, the government regrouped and began a systematic program of repression against the United organization, particularly in its Ulster stronghold. Sectarianism was deliberately stoked and the more faint-hearted elements began to drift away. It is a very dangerous business to begin a revolution and nor carry it through at the most opportune point. Timing is everything in politics but tragically the United Irishmen waited too long to make their move and paid a terrible price.

The United Irishmen were a consciously internationalist force inspired by the most profoundly revolutionary events the world had yet seen. Whatever their weaknesses, if there is one thing that socialists can draw inspiration from, it is this spirit of thoroughgoing internationalism. And it is worth pondering how close Irish history came to taking quite a different direction in December 1796. So much for the idea that the way things are is "inevitable".

Footnotes

1. George Rudé, Revolutionary Europe, 1783-1815 (London, 1964), p. 122.
2. Maryann Elliott, Partners in Revolution: The United Irishmen and France (London, 1982), p. xvii.
3. Elliott, p. 113.