The Legislative Assembly and The Fall of The French Monarchy - The Politics of The Left

The Politics of The Left

The Left had three objects of enmity. First among these was the royal couple, King Louis XVI, Queen Marie Antoinette and the royal family. The Left as a whole wished to replace the monarchy with a republic, although this was not initially the public position of most of them. Second came the émigrés – now seen as a threat from abroad—and, third, the non-juring clergy.

Those émigrés who had assembled in arms on the territories of the electors of Mainz and Treves (Trier) and in the Austrian Netherlands had put themselves in the position of public enemies. Their chiefs were the king's brothers, who affected to consider Louis as a captive and his acts as therefore invalid. The count of Provence gave himself the airs of a regent and surrounded himself with a ministry. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica writes that the only actual danger posed by the émigrés was symbolic: that they were only a few thousand strong; that they had no competent leader and no money; and that although they had earlier been of some diplomatic significance, they were increasingly unwelcome to the rulers whose hospitality they abused. However, Mignet claims that the threat was more substantive and their numbers growing and that "the ambassadors of the emigrants were received, while those of the French government were dismissed, ill received, or even thrown into prison, as in the case of M. Duveryer."

The non-juring clergy – those who refused to take an oath under the Civil Constitution of the Clergy – although harassed by the local authorities, kept the respect and confidence of most Catholics. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica reports that "No acts of disloyalty were proved against them, and commissioners of the National Assembly reported to its successor that their flocks only desired to be let alone. But the anti-clerical bias of the Legislative Assembly was too strong for such a policy." Mignet, however, quotes the marquis de Ferrières, "Priests, and especially bishops employed all the resources of fanaticism to excite the people, in town and country, against the civil constitution of the clergy", and points out that Bishops ordered the priests no longer to perform divine service in the same church with the constitutional priests. It was increasingly unlikely that two rival Churches could co-exist. Insurrection along religious lines broke out in Calvados, Gévaudan, and the Vendée (see Revolt in the Vendée).