Abolition of feudalism in France

On 4th August 1789, the Duke d'Aiguillon proposed in the Club Breton the abolition of feudal rights and the suppression of personal servitude. On the evening of 4 August, the Viscount de Noailles proposed to abolish the privileges of the nobility to restore calm in French provinces.

Members of the First Estate were at first reluctant to enter into the patriotic fervour of the night but eventually Anne Louis Henri de La Fare (then Bishop of Nancy) and the Bishop of Chartres sacrificed their titles.[5] Guy Le Guen de Kerangal, the Viscount de Beauharnais, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph de Lubersac, and de La Fare proposed to suppress the Banalités, seigneurial jurisdictions, game-laws and ecclesiastic privileges.

Historian Georges Lefebvre summarizes the night's work:

Without debate the Assembly enthusiastically adopted equality of taxation and redemption of all manorial rights except for those involving personal servitude – which were to be abolished without indemnification. Other proposals followed with the same success: the equality of legal punishment, admission of all to public office, abolition of venality in office [the purchase of an office], conversion of the tithe into payments subject to redemption, freedom of worship, prohibition of plural holding of benefices, suppression of annates (the year's worth of income owed the Pope and the bishop upon investiture). ... Privileges of provinces and towns were offered as a last sacrifice.[5]

In the course of a few hours, France abolished game-laws, manorial courts, venal offices (especially judgeships), the purchase and sale of pecuniary immunities, favoritism in taxation, of surplice money, first-fruits, pluralities, and unmerited pensions. Towns, provinces, companies, and cities also sacrificed their special privileges. A medal was struck to commemorate the day, and the Assembly declared Louis XVI the "Restorer of French Liberty".[6] François Furet emphasizes that the decisions of August 1789 survived and became an integral part of the founding texts of modern France.

They destroyed aristocratic society from top to bottom, along with its structure of dependencies and privileges. For this structure they substituted the modern, autonomous individual, free to do whatever was not prohibited by law. ... The Revolution thus distinguished itself quite early by its radical individualism.[7]

This "Saint Bartholomew of abuses", as François Mignet calls it, has often been the subject of hyperbole in the analyses of contemporaries and historians. The atmosphere inside the Assembly was so heady that confusion reigned in the provinces for months afterwards as to the true meaning of the laws. The real product of the night was not formalised until the Feudal Committee reported back on 5 March 1790. The Committee reintroduced the mainmorte (explicitly outlawed by the original decrees) and set a rate of redemption for real interests (those connected to the land) that was impossible for the majority of peasants to pay (30 times the annual rent).

The Russian anarchist Prince Peter Kropotkin wrote:

The Assembly was carried away by its enthusiasm, and in this enthusiasm nobody remarked the clause for redeeming the feudal rights and tithes, which the two nobles and the two bishops had introduced into their speeches – a clause terrible even in its vagueness, since it might mean all or nothing, and did, in fact, postpone ... the abolition of feudal rights for five years – until August 1793.[8]

Kropotkin concludes "The Feudal rights remain"[9] and scorns the other historians: "The historic legend is lovingly used to embellish this night, and the majority of historians, copying the story as it has been given by a few contemporaries, represent it as a night full of enthusiasm and saintly abnegation."

The signing of the August Decrees – events of the Revolution in bas relief, Place de la République

The August Decrees were nineteen decrees made on 4–11 August 1789 by the National Constituent Assembly during the French Revolution. There were 18 decrees or articles adopted concerning the abolition of feudalism, other privileges of the nobility, and seigneurial rights.[10]

The August Decrees were declared with the idea of calming the populace and encouraging them towards civility. However, the August Decrees revised itself over and over again during the next two years. King Louis XVI, in a letter, on the one hand expressed deep satisfaction with "the noble and generous demarche of the first two orders of the state" who, according to him had "made great sacrifices for the general reconciliation, for their patrie and for their king". On the other hand, he went on to say that though the "sacrifices were fine, I cannot admire it; I will never consent to the despoliation of my clergy and my nobility ... I will never give my sanction to the decrees that despoil them, for then the French people one day could accuse me of injustice or weakness".[12] What Louis was concerned with was not with the loss of position of the French nobility and clergy, but with adequate reparation for this loss. Meanwhile, the August Decrees paved the way for the Assembly to make the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

Originally, the peasants were supposed to pay for the release of seigneurial dues; these dues affected more than a quarter of the farmland in France and provided most of the income of the large landowners.[13] The majority refused to pay and in 1793 the obligation was cancelled. Thus the peasants got their land free, and also no longer paid the tithe to the church.[14]

D. M. G. Sutherland has examined the results for peasants and landlords. The peasants no longer had to pay the tithe to the Church. The landowners, however, were now allowed to raise rents by the same amount as the former tithe. The national government then taxed away the new income to owners by raising land taxes. Sutherland concludes that the peasants effectively paid twice, in terms of higher rents and heavier taxes. Many tried to evade the burden. In the long run, however, the new burdens on the tenants and landlords were largely offset by major gains in productivity, which made everyone richer.[15]

• French Revolution from the summer of 1790 to the establishment of the Legislative Assembly

• Elster, Jon. "The night of August 4, 1789. A study of social interaction in collective decision-making." Revue européenne des sciences sociales (2007): 71–94. online free
• Furet, François. "Night of August 4," in François Furet, and Mona Ozouf, eds. A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution (Harvard University Press, 1989) pp. 107–14.
• Herbert, Sydney. The Fall of Feudalism in France (1921) full text online free
• Eric Hobsbawm (1962). The Age of Revolution : Europe 1789–1848. ISBN 9780451627209.
• Georges Lefebvre (1962–64). French Revolution. Columbia.
• Mackrell, John Quentin Colborne. The Attack on Feudalism in Eighteenth-century France (Routledge, 2013)
• Markoff, John. Abolition of Feudalism: Peasants, Lords, and Legislators in the French Revolution (Penn State Press, 2010)
• H.M. Scott (2005). The Birth of a Great Power System 1740–1815. London.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Sutherland, D.M.G. "Peasants, Lords, and Leviathan: Winners and Losers from the Abolition of French Feudalism, 1780–1820," Journal of Economic History (2002) 62#1 pp. 1–24 in JSTOR
• Thompson, J. M. The French Revolution (1943), pp. 90–111