Browse Items (1079 total)
Description of the Royal Menagerie (1789) 1789
A common theme in libels was to compare the royal family to animals. This pamphlet parodies the Queen and her entourage as animals in a zoo, emphasizing how the courtly way of life at Versailles seemed bizarre to the rest of the French people. (The…
Abbé Grégoire, "Memoir in Favor of the People of Color or Mixed–Race of Saint Domingue" (1789) 1789
Baptiste–Henri Grégoire was a parish priest who was elected to the National Assembly by the clergy of Lorraine. He championed the rights of minorities both before the Revolution and in the legislature. The most noted beneficiaries of his attention…
Roster of Membership in the Society of Friends of Blacks, 1789 1789
Jacques Brissot founded the Society of the Friends of Blacks in 1788 to agitate against the slave trade and slavery itself. Brissot modeled the Society on the London Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade established in 1787. He hoped that…
Cahiers—A Parish Cahier 1789
The cahiers de doléances ["lists of grievances"] drawn up by each assembly in choosing deputies to the Estates–General are the best available source of the thoughts of the French population on the eve of the Revolution. This excerpt from a parish…
Three Cahiers from Orléans 1789
The cahiers de doléances ("list of grievances") drawn up by each assembly in choosing deputies to the Estates–General are the best available source of the thoughts of the French population on the eve of the French Revolution. The following excerpts…
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Cahiers from Rural Districts: Attack on Seigneurial Dues 1789
The petitions from rural communities decried the abuse of seigneurial dues that peasants owed to lords in exchange for which they were supposed to receive protection and supervision. But by 1789, as these excerpts demonstrate, peasants had come to…
Execrable Human Traffick, or The Affectionate Slaves 1789
This reproduction of a painting by George Morland (1789) has lurid colors and shows the sale of a slave. The artist suggests that friends or relatives are being separated, as one of the slaves is being forcibly restrained as the other slave is being…
The Crushed Aristocracy 1789-1790
This image uses the classical figures of an angel and a cherub to celebrate the achievements of Louis XVI on the base of a statue. The words state that he has destroyed the "aristocracy" and established the liberty of the French people. The monarch’s…
New Square of the Bastille 1789
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Awakening of the Third Estate 1789
With the Bastille being destroyed in the background, a member of the Third Estate breaks his shackles. Here, the clergy and nobility recoil in fear, thereby emphasizing the conflict between the estates.