ABSTRACT
On July 14, 1789, the people of Paris seized the Bastille. That event transformed the Revolution. On July 14, 1790, the people of France set out to commemorate that
event. The resulting festival would surpass the enthusiasm of 1789; it would mark the high point of the early years of the Revolution, the high point of revolutionary unity. The commemoration was officially known as the Fête de la fédération, the
Festival of the Federation. Despite its date, it was far more than just an anniversary or a commemoration. Throughout the kingdom, people gathered in towns and villages to honor the Revolution. In the days and weeks leading up to July 14, from every corner of the kingdom, soldiers known as fédérés – older soldiers, veterans of wars gone by – set out for Paris, to take part in the main celebration. That celebration by hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic citizens took place on the Champ de Mars, the fields in western Paris that, today, lie in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower but that on that day were transformed into a great hill, transformed by the sweat of Parisians who did everything they could to make the celebration as good as it could be. To hear its supporters describe it, everyone in Paris took part in preparing
the Champ de Mars. When the men the government hired were not up to the task, the citizens of the capital put their energy into the project and brought the plan to completion. With the old soldiers already on their way, with villages and towns across France greeting those soldiers, the capital was not going to let the soldiers’ experience in Paris be outshone. “The whole population,” according to Michelet, began working day and night: “men of all classes, of all ages, even children, all citizens, soldiers, priests, monks, actors, nuns, beautiful women, shopkeepers’ wives”1 all took part. One eyewitness, Louis Sébastien Mercier, agreed: “I saw 50,000 citizens,” he wrote, “of all classes, of all ages, of all sexes, forming the most superb portrait of unity.”2 There were even women who “forgot the weakness of their sex” and pushed the wheelbarrows. Other men also noticed the women’s participation. One song praised the way that their “delicate hands” had taken on so
much difficult work, and the zeal with which the women had set about their tasks.3 The work began on July 7, the people completed it before the 14th. The unity of the Parisians in constructing the scene, on the day of the
festival, became the unity of the nation. In the main festival in Paris, there was a place for everyone. Soldiers marched in procession before the king who stood over them. Some deputies in the Constituent Assembly had grown weary of Louis XVI by this point, of his inconsistencies and his indecisiveness, but the soldiers were touched by the presence of the “good citizen king” – awed, even, by the sight of their monarch, their hearts filled with filial piety. The people had long seen the king as their father, even if Louis XVI was sometimes uncomfortable in that role. Lafayette, the longtime revolutionary, newly dedicated to the royal family’s safety since the events of October, stood at the king’s feet. Alongside him were 200 priests, showing their allegiance to the Revolution. For the sermon blessing the procession a man named Talleyrand, the bishop of Autun, rose to the altar. This would not be the last that the Revolution saw of Talleyrand, a young bishop, intelligent, ambitious, and unencumbered by religious faith. As in all of the major festivals of the Revolution, women were prominent – even if the song quoted above described their presence as the “ornament” of the festival. But as the song explained, the women should not end their participation with the preparation of the festival. “Your task is not fulfilled,” the song went, calling on women to “Give us little Heroes/ worthy emulators of their fathers.”4
