Abolition of the Feudal System in France 1789

The Abolition of the Feudal System in France took place during the early stages of the French Revolution.

Background

It has been argued that the French Revolution was a revolt against feudalism. For centuries feudal institutions had survived in France, the nobility holding the rights of dispensing justice and such privileges as exemption from taxation, in return for which it provided military service. However the nobility no longer could be said to be protecting the realm (France had a standing army and navy), and there was growing injustice. Similarly the Roman Catholic Church no longer fulfilled the responsibilities acquired for its privileges and had, it was further argued, become a social parasite. The monarchy itself stood between the Revolution and its objectives. Louis XVI’s inept ministers had brought the ancien regime to the point of bankruptcy and to escape its consequences they asked the King to resurrect the decrepit Estates-General, mediaeval France’s unsuccessful experiment with representative government. An assembly of France’s noble, clerical and middle classes, the Estates-General had not been summoned since 1614. This Parliament opened at Versailles in May 1789. The Third Estate, the men of the middle-classes, dominated the gathering, and called for the types of government reform which would effectively mean a shift of power to them. However, under pressure, the King sided with the nobility and the clergy in defence of the feudal structure. This forced the Third Estate to choose between surrender and insurrection.

While the Third Estate deliberated, events unfolded: on July 14th a surly Paris crowd besieged and stormed the Bastille, an old royal fortress where cannon were stored and political prisoners were imprisoned. The aging Governor of the fortress, de Launay, was executed by the mob. Revolutionary violence now quickly spread around the country. The moment for moderation had been lost.

On the night of August 4th, the Viscount de Nouailles, who had fought in the American Revolution on the side of the rebels, declared before the Estates-General – now reconstituted as the National Assembly – that feudal abuses were the sole source of France’s uproar. In an atmosphere charged with emotions, he pleaded with his fellow nobles to surrender their feudal powers and restore the country. The Assembly applauded him. The nobles and clergy began discussions about sacrificing privileges. It seemed possible a deal could be struck. For days resolutions of divestiture were passed. On August 11, the Assembly enacted into law all of the fervid gestures of the preceding week. In this one great and strange episode, feudalism in France died.

The National Assembly’s Decree abolishing feudalism, though deeply revolutionary, is in some respects restrained. Its tone towards the King is grudgingly deferential, but its clear instructions to His Majesty to attend a service in the Royal Chapel are quite insulting. (Article XVIII). Its probably illegal usurpations against The Church and its internal government were even more extreme. Article V on tithes is almost contradictory. The decree respects certain rights of private property including indemnification for seizure, a contradiction in terms. It purports to make careful provision for a period of transition between old institutions and new.

Nearly all of the feudal laws addressed here (with the exception, for instance, of serfs) continued in some form or another in most neighbouring countries well into the nineteenth century and in a few cases into the twentieth.

The Decree

Article 1: The National Assembly hereby completely abolishes the feudal system. It decrees that, among the existing rights and dues, both feudal and censual, all those originating in or representing real or personal serfdom shall be abolished without indemnification. All other dues are declared redeemable, the terms and mode of redemption to be fixed by the National Assembly. Those of the said dues which are not extinguished by this decree shall continue to be collected until indemnification shall take place.

Article II: The exclusive right to maintain pigeon houses and dovecotes is abolished. The pigeons shall be confined during the seasons fixed by the community. During such periods they shall be looked upon as game, and everyone shall have the right to kill them upon his own land.

Article III: The exclusive right to hunt and to maintain unenclosed warrens is likewise abolished, and every landowner shall have the right to kill, or to have destroyed on his own land, all kinds of game, observing, however, such police regulations as may be established with a view to the safety of the public. All hunting preserves including the Royal forests, and all hunting rights under whatever denomination, are likewise abolished. Provision shall be made, however, in a manner compatible with the regard due to property and liberty, for maintaining the personal pleasures of the King. The President of the National Assembly shall be commissioned to ask of the King the recall of those sent to the galleys or exiled simply for violations of the hunting regulations, as well as for the release of those at present imprisoned for offences of this kind, and the dismissal of such cases as are now pending.

Article IV: All manorial courts are hereby suppressed without indemnification. But the magistrates of these courts shall continue to perform their functions until such time as the National Assembly shall provide for the establishment of a new judicial system.

Article V: Tithes of every description, as well as the dues which have been substituted for them, under whatever denomination they are known or collected (even when compounded for), possessed by secular or regular congregations, by holders of benefices, members of corporations (including the Order of Malta and other religious and military orders), as well as those devoted to the maintenance of churches, those impropriated to lay persons, and those substituted for the “portion congrue”, are abolished, on condition, however, that some other method be devised to provide for the expenses of divine worship, the support of the officiating clergy, for the assistance of the poor, for repairs and rebuilding of churches and parsonages, and for the maintenance of all institutions, seminaries, schools, academies, asylums, and organisations to which the present funds are devoted. Until such provision shall be made and the former possessors shall enter upon the enjoyment of an income on the new system, the National Assembly decrees that the said tithes shall continue to be collected according to law and in the customary manner. Other tithes, of whatever nature they may be, shall be redeemable in such manner as the Assembly shall determine. Until this matter is adjusted, the National Assembly decrees that these, too, shall continue to be collected.

Article VI: All perpetual ground rents, payable either in money or in kind, of whatever nature they may be, whatever their origin and to whomsoever they may be due,……….shall be redeemable at a rate fixed by the Assembly. No due shall in the future be created which is not redeemable.

Article VII: The sale of judicial and municipal offices shall be abolished forthwith. Justice shall be dispensed with “gratis”. Nevertheless the magistrates at present holding such offices shall continue to exercise their functions and to receive their emoluments unto the Assembly shall have made provision for indemnifying them.

Article VIII: The fees of the country priests are abolished, and shall be discontinued so soon as provision shall be made for increasing the minim0um salary (“portion congrue) of the parish priests and the payment to the curates. A regulation shall be drawn up to determine the status of the priests in towns.

Article XI: Pecuniary privileges, personal or real, in the payment of taxes are abolished forever. Taxes shall be collected from all the citizens, and from all property, in the same manner and in the same form. Plans shall be considered by which the taxes shall be paid proportionately by all, even for the last six months of the current year.

Article X: Inasmuch as a national constitution and public liberty are of more advantage to the provinces than the privileges which some of those enjoy, and inasmuch as the surrender of such privileges is essential to the intimate union of all parts of the realm, it is decreed that all the peculiar privileges, pecuniary or otherwise, of the provinces, principalities, districts, cantons, cities, and communes, are once and for all abolished and are absorbed into the law common to all Frenchmen.

Article XI: All citizens, without distinction of birth, are eligible to any office or dignity, whether ecclesiastical, civil, or military and no profession shall imply and derogation.

Article XII: Hereafter no remittances shall be made for annates or for any other purpose to the Court of Rome, the Vice-Legation at Avignon, or to the Nunciature at Lucerne. The clergy of the diocese shall apply to their Bishops in regard to the filling of benefices and dispensations, the which shall be granted “gratis” without regard to reservations, expectancies, and Papal months, all the churches of France enjoying the same freedom.

Article XIII: (This article abolished various ecclesiastical dues.)

Article XIV: Pluralities shall not be permitted hereafter in cases where the revenue from the benefice or benefices held shall exceed the sum of three thousand livres. Nor shall any individual be allowed to enjoy several pensions from benefices, or a pension and a benefice, if the revenue which he already enjoys from such sources exceeds the same sum of three thousand livres.

Article XV: The National Assembly shall consider, in conjunction with the King, the report which is to be submitted to it relating to pensions, favours, and salaries, with a view to suppressing all such as are not deserved, and reducing those which shall prove excessive; and the amount shall be fixed which the King may in future disburse for this purpose.

Article XVI: The National Assembly decrees that a medal shall be struck in memory of the recent grave and important deliberations for the welfare of France, and that a Te Deum shall be chanted in gratitude in all parishes and churches in France.

Article XVII: The National Assembly solemnly proclaims the King, Louis XVI, the “Restorer of French Liberty”.

Article XVIII: The National Assembly shall present itself in a body before the King, in order to submit to him the decrees which have just been passed, to tender to him the tokens of its most respectful gratitude; and to pray him to permit the Te Deum to be chanted in his chapel, and to be present himself at this service.

Article XIX: The National Assembly shall consider, immediately after the constitution, the drawing up of the laws necessary for the development of the principles which it has laid down in the present decree. The latter shall be transmitted by the deputies without delay to all the provinces, together with the decree of the 10th of this month, in order that it may be printed, published, read from the parish pulpits and posted up on wherever it shall be deemed necessary.

Further reading

• Viorst, Milton, ‘’The Great Documents of Western Civilisation’’, New York, 1965, pps:184-189.
• Phillips, Gregory D., ‘’The Diehards – Aristocratic Society and Politics in Edwardian England’’, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1979. ISBN 0-674-20555-3 . This excellent book mainly covers the period 1870-1914, a period of great societal and political change in England, notably at local levels. It outlines the gradual removal from the aristocracy in the UK of their privileges by liberal governments.