August Decrees

The August Decrees were nineteen decrees made in August 1789 by the National Constituent Assembly during the French Revolution.

The fall of the Bastille on 14 July 1789 was followed by a mass uproar spreading from Paris to the countryside. Noble families were attacked and many aristocratic manors were burned. Abbeys and castles were also attacked and destroyed. The peers started to emigrate to the cities of France, and incidents of brigandage multiplied by the moment. The season of La Grande Peur – the Great Fear – was characterised by social hysteria and anxiety over who was going to be the next victim. In many cases, the violence was begun not by homeless people or hunger-driven peasants but by settled countrymen who took this opportunity to further their own cause.

The Great Fear opened up the vulnerability of the French government – there was a lack of authority at the very center of it. The prolonged riots and massacres led to a general anxiety that things might get out of control, and they did. It was an experience that the country had never undergone before.

By late July 1789, as the peasant revolt reports poured into Paris from every part of the country, the Assembly decided to reform the social pattern of the country in order to pacify the outraged peasants and encourage them towards peace and harmony. The discussion continued through the night of the fourth of August, and on the morning of the fifth the Assembly abolished the feudal system, and eliminated many clerical and noble rights and privileges. The August decrees were finally completed a week later.

See: Abolition of feudalism in France#The debates in the Assembly

There were nineteen decrees in all, with a revised list published on 11 August.

The August Decrees were declared with the idea of calming the populace and encouraging them towards civility. However, the August Decrees revised itself over and over again during the next two years. King Louis XVI, in a letter, on the one hand expressed deep satisfaction with “…the noble and generous demarche of the first two orders of the state…” who, according to him had “…made great sacrifices for the general reconciliation, for their patrie and for their king.” On the other hand, he went on to say that though the “…sacrifices were fine, I cannot admire it; I will never consent to the despoliation of my clergy and my nobility… I will never give my sanction to the decrees that despoil them, for then the French people one day could accuse me of injustice or weakness.” What Louis was concerned with was not with the loss of position of the French nobility and clergy, but with adequate reparation for this loss. Meanwhile, the August Decrees paved the way for the Assembly to make the Declaration of the Rights of Man.

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