In the wake of the French Revolution that broke out on 14 July 1789, the Liège Revolution began on 18 August of the same year. The people of Paris seized the Bastille on 14 July and the people of Liège took the Town Hall and the Citadel on 18 August. In both cases, people were exhausted by a disastrous economic situation. Bread had sky-rocketed to prices few could afford. People revolted against a regime whose taxes, imposed to make them pay for its mismanagement and extravagance, brought the working classes to the brink of starvation.
In both the Kingdom of France and the Principality of Liège, a small independent State in the westernmost part of the Germanic Holy Roman Empire to which it was indebted, the old regime of absolute monarchy (known as the Ancien Régime) was in crisis. Debt accumulated by the Sovereign, whether he were the King of France or the Prince-Bishop of Liège, weighed heavily on the State budget. Yet neither the Clergy nor the Aristocracy, both of which supported the old regime, paid tax. Worse still, the Clergy, which was the largest land-owner, imposed a tithe on the poor wretches living on their lands. The Aristocracy also forced their subjects to pay charges. The working classes in town and country, as well as the bourgeoisie, demanded that the burden of the various financial contributions they had to pay should be allocated differently and that the Clergy and the Aristocracy should pay their share Share A unit of ownership interest in a corporation or financial asset, representing one part of the total capital stock. Its owner (a shareholder) is entitled to receive an equal distribution of any profits distributed (a dividend) and to attend shareholder meetings. . There was disapproval of the type of spending indulged in by the absolute monarchical power. Both the working classes and the bourgeoisie were prepared to take action to obtain political democracy. There was also a desire to end despotism and the many forms of injustice.
In August 1789, the Ancien Régime was collapsing in the Principality of Liège. On18 August, the Town Hall of Liège was invaded by a mass of proletarians and semi-proletarians led by radical members of the bourgeoisie such as Fabry, a jurist, Gossuin, a gunsmith, and several noblemen, amongst whom were the Baron de Chestret, representing the minor nobility. The crowd threw out the mayors and their councillors who were under the orders of the conservative Prince-Bishop, and designated Fabry and De Chestret to replace them. At the same time, a group of armed rebels overcame, then sacked, without any bloodshed, the military barracks inside the Citadel. Next, de Chestret, under pressure from the masses, went to fetch the Prince-Bishop from his castle of Seraing, a few miles from town. That evening, the latter was brought to the Town Hall where he signed an act of recognition of the new municipal authorities. In the days that followed, revolutionary fervour spread to the twenty-two other towns in the Prince-Bishopric, where the main magistrates of the Ancien Régime were replaced. [1]
In those days, the Principality had six hundred thousand inhabitants, including about sixty thousand in the capital. That is, as many as in Antwerp and Ghent, and slightly fewer than Brussels. The Principality of Liège, having a more developed manufacturing base than the Austrian Low Countries, of which Brussels was the capital, was the most economically advanced region of continental Europe on the road to industrial capitalism. [2]
The Principality of Liège was the most economically advanced region of continental Europe on the road to industrial capitalism
A fifth of the population were town-dwellers, but a much higher proportion of the Principality’s inhabitants were involved, in one way or another, in industrial development and the capitalist mode of production. Indeed, in the regions closest to the towns, members of the bourgeoisie had installed small factories or hired rural workers who worked at home. This enabled the property-owning classes to short-circuit craftsmen’s guilds. Around towns such as Liège, Verviers, Huy, Dinant, Chatelet and in the region of Couvin there flourished forges, ironworks, nail factories and collieries, while cloth was manufactured in Verviers, in the area of Franchimont and in Thuin. Some authors refer to these workers as “peasant-workers” as within the rural families of these regions people were involved both in farming and semi-industrial activities. Nevertheless, in most cases, the wage-earning activity was only one element of the work and income of this semi-proletarian section of society. A true wage-earning proletariat did not yet exist.
Moreover, the now rich bourgeoisie began systematically to take over communal land (municipal property), which rural communities still enjoyed as part of their collective traditions: the right to cut wood in the forests, the right to graze their cattle, the right to cultivate crops in the clearings, and so on.
The most advanced town in continental Europe, in terms of the spread of capitalist modes of production, was Verviers. With its population of ten thousand and its recent development due to the wool industry, Verviers did not have many big craftsmen’s guilds. Thus the bourgeoisie had been able to develop a capitalist manufacturing base unhindered. Having leap-frogged the guilds, the workers of Verviers were pioneers, creating the first workers’ provident fund in 1729 and the first trade union in 1759. They organized strikes.
Throughout the Principality, the high clergy and the religious orders, alongside the blue blood nobility, although they were on the decline, nevertheless managed to retain considerable economic power because of the vast agricultural domains they owned, which a large number of peasant families farmed for their profit Profit The positive gain yielded from a company’s activity. Net profit is profit after tax. Distributable profit is the part of the net profit which can be distributed to the shareholders. . However the role of the high clergy and the religious orders tended to be mainly parasitic, with the large revenues extracted from the peasantry minimally re-invested, and that only in agriculture.
In practice, political power was concentrated in the hands of the Prince-Bishop and the high clergy
Liège’s political regime lagged behind the region’s economic development. The Prince-Bishop was usually a foreign nobleman either from the Germanic Holy Roman Empire, or from France. He was chosen by the high clergy, before having the title of Bishop bestowed upon him by the Pope and the title of Prince by the Germanic Emperor. The Prince-Bishop was supposed to govern the Principality in agreement with the three constituted estates.
The three estates were the First Estate (the high clergy), the Noble Estate (fifteen families) supposed to represent the entire hinterland, and the Third Estate representing the bourgeoisie and the craftsmen organized by trade (the guilds).
In practice, political power was concentrated in the hands of the Prince-Bishop and the high clergy.
Indeed, a century earlier, in 1684, [3] the Prince-Bishop of the time had abolished the democratic mode of election by universal suffrage for men who had fought hard for it in the 16th century. The bourgeoisie and craftsmen had won that right through often violent confrontations with the Prince-Bishop, the high clergy and the nobility. Since 1684, the Third Estate, representing the Principality’s twenty-three “good cities” (i.e. cities with a charter of rights), was elected by a mere five hundred and sixty-seven electors. Constituted by the mayors of all those towns, it had almost entirely passed into the service of the Prince-Bishop and the First Estate, and had in any case lost a good part of the power it had enjoyed from the 14th to the 17th centuries.
The upper classes were in crisis and could no longer rule as they had done hitherto.
The revolutionary bourgeoisie of Liège violently opposed the political regime for its non- representative and parasitic nature, especially the fact that the high clergy and the nobility were exempt from taxation. In 1787 Fabry, one of their leaders, proposed the abolition of the indirect taxation that burdened the bourgeoisie and the poor (craftsmen and manual labourers). He suggested a single property tax and also criticized the city’s bad governance which meant that a quarter of its revenues went to service its debt! The bourgeois revolutionaries went further, contesting the subjection of the Third Estate to the Prince-Bishop.
In their political programme, they proposed to establish a constitutional monarchy, as can be understood from the following text by Nicolas Bassenge, one of the bourgeois revolutionaries: “People of Liège, you are a free people! A people is free when it obeys only the laws that it gives itself with the consent of all its individual members or by representatives they have appointed and authorized. In other words, the people are free only when the sovereignty, the legislative power, belongs to the whole nation. The leader of the nation, its chief and not its master, is the organ of the nation’s will. Part of its sovereignty when laws need to be made, he is the sole delegate to guarantee its execution. He promulgates it when all have given their consent: but he is only the organ, not the interpreter. He can only publish it, not change it; he can only have it implemented according to the prescribed rules. (J.N. de Bassenge, Lettres à l’abbé de Paix, 1787 [in French], quoted by René Van Santbergen, “1789 au pays de Liège ou l’heureuse révolution”, in Cahiers du Clio n°14, 1968, p.56).
Those of the noble estate too, though they had the privilege of being exonerated from tax, opposed the Prince-Bishop and the high clergy, because they were practically excluded from power. The bourgeois revolutionaries then entered negotiations with the noble estate to fight the Prince-Bishop, the high clergy and the Third Estate! Clearly those at the top were in crisis and could no longer govern as they had hitherto.
The peasant communities prosecuted the clergy for not fulfilling their duties such as maintaining churches and their schools, even though they levied the tithe
There was an increase of about 60% in the Principality’s population between 1700 and 1785. This naturally included a high proportion of young people, a determining factor in the revolution.
On the eve of the revolution, workers in town and country were suffering a severe economic crisis. The price of bread rocketed and there were significant levels of unemployment in the towns. In Verviers, where a quarter of the population were destitute, the situation verged on the catastrophic. In the countryside, peasant communities prosecuted the clergy for not fulfilling their duties such as maintaining churches and their schools, even though they levied the tithe. Peasants also took nobles to court for continuing to demand services, and the bourgeoisie, for appropriating common goods Common goods In economics, common goods are characterized by being collectively owned, as opposed to either privately or publicly owned. In philosophy, the term denotes what is shared by the members of one community, whether a town or indeed all humanity, from a juridical, political or moral standpoint. . The entire population was disgusted by land-owners exporting wheat, exacerbating food scarcity in the Principality. In 1787-1788, three-quarters of the wheat harvest was exported.
Finally, news of the revolution in France convinced the bourgeoisie to organize a popular uprising to force the Prince-Bishop to make far-reaching reforms. There is no doubt that the events in France triggered the uprising, but it is obvious that all the elements for a social explosion were already present in the Principality of Liège. Revolutionary proclamations were in circulation in the second quarter of the year 1789:
On 13 August 1789, worried by the rising tensions and having learned from the French experience, the Prince-Bishop summoned the three estates for 30 August. He planned to suggest to the clergy and the nobles that they should abandon their tax privileges. Just like Louis XVI a few months earlier, he thought he could defuse the social time-bomb.
It is frightening to see that after twenty-five years of peace and tranquillity, the administration has allowed our national debt to grow by several million
The bourgeoisie and their noble allies decided to outpace him, by posting on the city walls the following text: “Asking the clergy to contribute to public expenditure will not relieve the poor who will still be taxed as heavily as before (…) It is frightening to see that after twenty-five years of peace and tranquillity, the administration has allowed our national debt to grow by several million.
(…) “It is time to get to the root of the problem (…) It hinges on the national constitution. All our efforts should be concentrated on getting just and legal representation for our nation. It is time for our ghost of a Third Estate to make room for this national representation; time to have done with the oppressive and anti-constitutional State of 1684 (…) Above all, one provision is required here (…) We wish (…) ecclesiastics and laymen, nobles and the bourgeoisie to unite so that all become as one family, so that there will only be one public purse for all and that all shall contribute in proportion to their goods and abilities. To this effect, there needs to be a general assembly (…) The time for that assembly has perhaps never been so ripe. The progress of Enlightenment and the French example call for it. It hinges on the national constitution. All our efforts should be concentrated on getting just and legal representation for our nation. And our lengthy discussions, so wearisome for all, must surely hasten that end. Let us look forward to that great day.” (quoted by R. Van Santbergen, ibid., p.60.)
The citizens’ audit of public spending, debt and the tax policy at the heart of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen In the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen ratified in Paris in August 1789, three articles out of 17 deal explicitly with the citizens’ audit of public spending, public debt and the need for tax justice. Article 13 asserts that all citizens, according to their means, must contribute to financing public spending. Article 14 indicates that citizens, directly or through their representatives, must be able to decide (“consent to it freely”) how public spending is financed and how that money is used; and that to do this, they must be able to audit the public accounts (“watch over its use”). Article 15 specifies that “Society has the right to ask a public official for an accounting of his administration.” Article 13 “For the maintenance of the public force, and for administrative expenses, a general tax is indispensable; it must be equally distributed among all citizens, in proportion to their ability to pay.” Article 14 “All citizens have the right to ascertain, by themselves, or through their representatives, the need for a public tax, to consent to it freely, to scrutinize its use, and to determine its proportion, basis, collection and duration.” Article 15 “Society has the right to ask a public official for an accounting of his administration.” Source: https://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/en/declaration-of-human-and-civic-rights-of-26-august-1789 The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen adopted in the Liège region at the Congress of Polleur in September 1789 asserts the same civic rights in similar terms but in more transparent language than that of Paris : Articles 13, 14 and 15:
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As we have seen, on 18 August 1789, the Prince-Bishop’s power sustained a decisive blow. By submitting to the revolutionaries’ primary demands, he seemed at first to be seeking a compromise. The two new mayors of Liège, Fabry and De Chestret, would have been willing, but under pressure from the population, on 25 August 1789, the new authorities found themselves abolishing all taxes. Thus on 27 August, the Prince-Bishop decided to leave the country and take refuge in Trier, in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. From there he soon appealed for his rights to be restored.
The masses were soon radicalized, so on 5 September 1789 Fabry, having become far less radical after taking power, wrote: “It is not implausible that things here should become even more confused and that a second revolution, bigger than the first, might bring in a new order.”
The negative attitude of the Prince-Bishop blocked any chances of the clinical transition wanted by the new mayors. The latter were thus obliged to instigate a revolutionary break in spite of themselves and all the while fearing the people. Fabry wrote to his friend Lonhienne in 1791: “Those who say that our revolution was over-hasty are right. I did not wish for it at the time we did it. I said so a year earlier to Mirabeau, who agreed with me and at the time was not himself expecting the French Revolution. The French example stirred up our passions: we charged forward on 18 August 1789, and I was swept along with the current.” (Quoted by Maurice Bologne, La Révolution de 1789 en Wallonie, Editions Biblio, Liège, 1939, p.19). Fabry and de Chestret were indeed constantly trying for conciliation, first with the Prince-Bishop, then with the King of Prussia, not without some success in the latter case, until April 1790. Their objective remained the establishment of a constitutional monarchy based on an Assembly of the three estates. Nevertheless, under pressure from the masses and certain plebeian leaders such as Colonel Ransonnet, they did carry out a revolutionary mission.
Demands for free education for the poor often recurred
In the rich Hesbaye countryside, where semi-industrial activities were scarce, village communities met up in general assemblies and drew up lists of grievances, of which the clergy was a common target. It is interesting to note that there were repeated demands for free education for the poor! In other farming areas, peasant struggles also developed, sometimes resulting in violent clashes. Soon those revolutionary rural areas sought to be represented among those who ran the Principality. Their demand was met in June 1790 and elections were organized shortly afterwards. Voters were heads of households, mostly men, and only very rarely women.
Women were left out of the dominant narrative of the Liège Revolution and were denied civil and political rights In the various books on the Liège Revolution, the part that was played by women is hardly ever mentioned. Yet, as in any revolution or emancipation struggle, they played a decisive role. In one of the reference books devoted to the revolution, namely Adolphe Borgnet’s volume published in 1865, not a single woman is mentioned in the list of 563 personalities who, he claims, played a direct or indirect part in the Liège Revolution. Anne-Josèphe Théroigne, born in the vicinity of Liège, is not mentioned though she played a part in the revolutionary process, mainly in Paris, and also participated in the Liège Revolution in 1790-1791. Thousands of anonymous women who, at key moments, contributed to an acceleration or a radicalization of mobilization, are left out of the narrative. In Paris, a large majority of the Jacobin leaders, though considered to be radical and revolutionary, opposed women’s active participation in decision-making. At the Jacobins’ instigation the “Société des Républicaines révolutionnaires” (Society of Revolutionary Republican Women) was prohibited and dissolved in November 1793. Jean-Pierre-André Amar, one of the members of the Jacobin leadership said, “Women cannot access lofty notions and serious meditations… A woman must not leave her family circle to meddle with government business… We still stumble on the word freedom; so women, whose moral education is next to non-existent, are even less able to access the enlightenment of these principles… It is not possible for women to exercize political rights" (quoted in Daniel Guérin, La lutte des classes sous la première république, vol. 1, p. 248). Countering such arguments, Claire Lacombe, one of the founding members and leaders of the Société des Républicaines révolutionnaires, said, “Our rights are the rights of the people, and if we are oppressed, we will be able to resist oppression” (quoted by Daniel Guérin, p. 246) |
This part of the Principality, located about twenty miles from the capital city and including industrial towns such as Theux and Verviers and more rural areas such as Jalhay, experienced a great revolutionary effervescence before Liège itself, starting on 6 August 1789. In this area, the most advanced in terms of capitalist development, contradictions between Capital and Labour, bourgeoisie and workers and peasants had already reached a critical level. This is why only a very few capitalists from Verviers were to be found within the revolutionary movement. Pierre Lebrun showed this most convincingly in a fascinating study of industrial development in Verviers during the 18th century. In the following extract, he argued against Henri Pirenne, a historian who had written a voluminous history of Belgium:
“As for the bourgeoisie in Verviers, it cannot possibly be an ‘enemy of privileges or of old social traditions’ for the simple reason that these only existed in 1789 to favour the freedom of employers and shackle the working class. Therefore it was precisely the working class – the fourth estate as it were – who rose up, with, at its head, as in any revolution, disgruntled leaders from higher classes. In Verviers there was no ‘new, literate,