Enlightenment French Revolution

The 1789 document the Rights of Man and Citizen was written by the National Assembly of France, which consisted of mostly wealthy bourgeoisies of the third estate. The remaining members of the third estate, the peasants and sans-culottes, therefore did not have much say in what was being addressed to the public. Enlightenment ideas such as popular sovereignty and civic equality, advocated by all three groups of the estate, is apparent in the statement. Although this was a step in the right direction for all members of the third estate, the bourgeoisies and peasants benefited more from this document than the sans-culottes. However, the sans-culottes’ need of equality and a political reorganization was addressed by the National Assembly of France. The Great Cat Massacre gives an insight to the lives of the sans-culottes in 1730s Paris, France. These apprentices were mistreated by their masters, who they wanted respect from. The sans-culottes were the poorest of the third-estate and suffered from lack of sleep, eating cat food, and undesirable living conditions. Due to the decrease of
masters in the late seventeenth century to the early eighteenth century, it was difficult for them to rise in rank because of how many apprentices a master had working for him . This, of course, led to the apprentices’ infamous cat massacre. What they were asking for: work, food, sleep, do not appear to be difficult things to grant, unlike the sans-culottes of the 1789 French Revolution who demanded subsistence and equality in a country of an absolutist monarchy . As seen in the Rights of Man and Citizen, the National Assembly stated that, “All citizens, being equal in its eyes, art equally eligible to all public dignitaries, places, and employments, according to their capacities, and without other distinction than that of their virtues and talents ”. This insinuates that, although men would have civic equality, they also needed to possess the credentials and talents required to work. In the 1730s, many of the printing houses were flooded with individuals who did not possess the credentials (alloues), preventing the qualified apprentices from making money and climbing in rank of the masters . Thus, the demand of work was met in the declaration; however, the other two demands were not. French Revolution sans-culottes sought to have a republic, instead of an absolute monarchy as their political framework.
In article six of the declaration, there was influence from the Enlightenment philosophe Rousseau with his idea of the general will. That is, in order for individuals to feel free they needed to obey the rulings of the majority . This thinking advocated the idea of a democracy, which was mentioned previously in article three: “The sources of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation; no body, no individual can exercise authority that does not proceed from it in plain terms ”. The idea of a “nation” was also from Rousseau. His ideas essentially focused on equality among the nation: if there are no estates, then there is not inequality. Or, no one estate or person could control the decisions of the country so that all individuals would be equal before the
law.