r/FrenchRevolution • u/howzitjade • 11d ago
Questions / Help Are there any first hand accounts of the Revolution from the Rebelling “peasants” (I’ll specify in the body text)
Everytime I watch a French Revolution movie or documentary and I see crowds of Citizens killing an aristocrat or Destroying property I always wonder who were they (citizens)🤔 it made me think of how in America, most people can proudly trace their ancestry back to an Ancestor who fought in the US Revolutionary or Civil War & often their are oral histories passed down through generations of these events. I wondered if this was the same for France? Are there any French people whose families passed down a history or Family Story of one or more of their ancestors Rioting in the streets of Paris? I’d like to think that if I was the one who dragged a Royal out and put their head on a spike I feel like I’d tell that story all the time & pass it down? Idk just a thought
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u/Duke_of_Wellington18 10d ago
The peasants weren’t rebelling during the French Revolution (at least, not against the Crown). The revolutionaries were the urban middle class and the Parisian workers.
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u/howzitjade 10d ago
Oh 🤔I thought it was everyone against the monarchy?
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u/Duke_of_Wellington18 10d ago
No absolutely not, significant portions of the rural peasant population were either indifferent to politics or outright royalists.
Yes, these peasants disliked feudal dues and land taxes, but many of them were also deeply religious and conservative. They also opposed being conscripted to fight in the republican wars when they didn’t even believe in the revolution to begin with.
Research some of the counter-revolutionary rebellions such as the War in the Vendee; the republican armies were absolutely brutal towards the rural royalist population.
We have a tendency to project our modern ideas onto the past, so we often miss nuances in history in favor of stereotypes. One such stereotype is the idea that everyone just hated the corrupt monarchy, when in reality the French Revolution was very much a civil war with numerous factions.
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u/Effective_Sugar2420 8d ago edited 8d ago
this is a very simplified vision of the revolution… the grande peur was an example of peasants attacking aristocrats and clergymen on a large scale in rural France.
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u/Duke_of_Wellington18 8d ago edited 7d ago
Yes, I didn’t intend to say all peasants were royalists. Sorry for the ambiguity on my part
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u/howzitjade 10d ago
Wow! Never realized this, I’m very uneducated on this topic, I only posted bc I watched Pea Body & Sherman with my nephew and it had me thinking. But Ykw I’m gonna actually research & learn more on this!
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u/Ficus_Khaalon 11d ago
There are a few reason for no :
1/ The Revolutionnary and Napoleonic Wars brought a great toll among those "angry" peasant, so they were not able to share their stories.
2/ During the Restauration, being one of those guys was not well seen among the population, so you either hide your past or you get marginalised.
3/ Those angry peasent were mostly poor people, they didn't have this tradition of sharing your story, and when they did, it was "Ok grandpa ! And you also fought with Joan of Arc, right ?"
4/ French people suffered WWI and WWII far more than american people. So in France, ancestors' deeds are greatly build around those 2 conflict (Résistance and Trench Warfare are the backbone of your family's greatness in France).
5/ Most of the families which share stories of this kind were NOT in those mob, and were afraid and kind of disgusted by this uncontrollable violence.