Symbolic Forms of Political Practice (Simplified and Briefed)

The French Revolution was full of dramatic turning points—the fall of the Bastille, the king’s flight to Varennes, the fall of
the monarchy, Robespierre’s downfall, and the rise of Napoleon. Each event was marked by proclamations, speeches,
reports, and festivals that reflected the shifting political mood.

An example from 1797 in Grenoble shows how even clothing became deeply political. After a purge of royalist deputies,
the local government commissioner warned citizens not to express political loyalties through their dress. Yet he admitted
that clothing had real symbolic power. Wearing certain colors, frills, or styles could signal royalist or revolutionary
sympathies—and could even lead to street fights.

During the Revolution, politics were not limited to speeches or elections. Everyday objects—clothes, colors, dishes, coins,
calendars, and even playing cards—became political symbols. These symbols didn’t just represent opinions; they helped
people form and express their political identities. Through such symbols, people recognized allies, enemies, and neutral
parties, turning daily life into a field of political struggle.

Revolutionary Rhetoric and Symbolic Power (Simplified and Briefed)

In revolutionary France, power was said to come from the Nation or the people, but it was unclear how this collective will
could actually be recognized. As Benjamin Constant wrote in 1796, revolutions erase differences and sweep everything
away like a torrent. In such chaos, it was hard to determine what made any government truly legitimate.

To hold power during the Revolution meant having some control over how the nation’s identity was expressed—through
words, symbols, and rituals. While speeches in clubs and assemblies were fleeting, the collective symbols of revolution—
liberty trees, liberty caps, female figures of Liberty and the Republic, festivals, school contests, and elections—had lasting
influence. These rituals were not just representations of power; they were power in action.

All governments rely on symbols and rituals to function. Even the most rational or modern state depends on shared signs
that reinforce legitimacy in everyday life. When revolutions overthrow old regimes, they also reject the old symbols of
rule and must create new ones to express the ideals and principles of the new political order.

Symbol Making and the Politicization of Everyday Life during the French Revolution (Simplified and Briefed)

The French Revolution sharply revealed how central symbols were to political power. The revolutionaries did not begin
with an organized movement, a clear plan, or fixed symbols. They created their slogans, rituals, and emblems as events
unfolded. As Robespierre stated, revolutionary government was entirely new—something no political writer or past
regime could guide. The past, especially the monarchy, with all its ceremonial grandeur, offered little inspiration.

Yet the monarchy had shown the power of symbols. Under the Bourbons, political power was deeply tied to the person
of the king—being close to him meant holding authority. To reclaim power for themselves, the revolutionaries had to
destroy those royal symbols, culminating in the king’s public trial and execution. This act was both political and symbolic:
a complete rejection of monarchical authority.

Because the monarchy had been built on symbolism, the revolutionaries were acutely aware of its importance. Their
distrust of political factions made symbols and rituals—like liberty trees, festivals, and national colors—safe ways to
express revolutionary values. Planting a liberty tree or wearing the tricolor was not seen as “factional,” but as patriotic.
These symbols gave people a shared emotional and psychological connection to the Revolution and created a lasting
republican tradition.

Still, some features of the Old Regime survived. As Tocqueville noted, the revolutionaries didn’t entirely destroy the
monarchy’s bureaucratic structure; instead, they expanded and modernized it. Local and national administrators
continued much as before—writing minutes, passing laws, and maintaining order—though now in the name of the people
rather than the king.

Outside the bureaucracy, political activity flourished. Clubs, newspapers, pamphlets, songs, and public gatherings
multiplied between 1789 and 1794. Yet these alone did not make the Revolution unique. England and the U.S. already
had such forms of participation. What made France exceptional was the belief that it was creating a completely new
human order—without precedent.

This radical vision demanded the creation of a “new man” and a purified society. The Revolution sought to eliminate every
trace of the Old Regime, from habits to daily customs. As a result, politics entered everyday life. Clothing, speech, festivals,
and even leisure became political acts. The Revolution thus expanded the sites and symbols of power far beyond formal
institutions, transforming ordinary life into a stage of political expression.

This transformation began early. Observers like the Duke of Dorset recognized in 1789 that France was undergoing “the
greatest revolution known.” He saw it first through symbols: people wearing the tricolor cockade and the king being led
into Paris like a captive symbolizing the people’s triumph. These symbolic gestures marked the beginning of revolutionary
politics, showing how the French Revolution turned the ordinary and the visible into instruments of political meaning and
power.

The Political Power of Revolutionary Symbols (Simplified and Briefed)

From the very beginning of the French Revolution, newly created symbols became sources of political and social conflict.
The cockade—a simple ribbon badge—was one of the first. Initially green, it was quickly abandoned because green
represented the Count of Artois, the king’s unpopular brother. It was replaced with the red, white, and blue tricolor
cockade, which soon gained immense political meaning.

King Louis XVI’s own safety depended on wearing it, and when rumors spread that soldiers at Versailles had trampled the
tricolor and worn royalist white or black instead, it sparked the famous Women’s March on Versailles in October 1789.
No speech about liberty could have mobilized people as effectively as this attack on their symbol. To insult the cockade
was to insult the Revolution itself.

Other revolutionary symbols soon appeared—the liberty cap, liberty tree, and patriotic altar. Each had different origins
but all carried powerful political messages. Their use, however, often led to new conflicts. Royalists or
counterrevolutionaries destroyed liberty trees, while revolutionary authorities replanted them in defiance. These
struggles over symbols reflected deeper tensions between government control and popular enthusiasm.

Officials even tried to claim ownership of such symbols. In 1794, the Abbé Grégoire wrote that the first liberty tree had
been planted by a priest in Poitou in 1790. Historians now know the earliest “trees” were actually maypoles raised by
peasants in Périgord during uprisings against local lords. These poles often looked like gallows and bore threatening
slogans, which officials viewed as signs of rebellion.

Despite their controversial beginnings, liberty trees soon became universal symbols of revolutionary loyalty. By 1792,
around 60,000 liberty trees had been planted across France—turning a peasant act of defiance into a national emblem of
freedom and unity.

From Popular Symbols to Official Rituals (Simplified and Briefed)

As revolutionary symbols spread widely among the people, the government began to formalize and control their use. By
July 1792, every man in France was required to wear the tricolor cockade. Around the same time, the Legislative Assembly
ordered each commune to build a patriotic altar where newborns would be received in civic ceremonies.

Revolutionary clubs and local officials also took over popular practices like planting liberty trees, turning them into official
events. However, as enthusiasm grew, authorities began to impose restrictions. In Beauvais, for example, officials banned
the violent custom of dragging political opponents to liberty trees and forcing them to bow before them. Fences were
built around these trees to mark them as sacred and to control public access. These measures reflected the government’s
effort to discipline and regulate popular power.

The clearest example of this process was the systematization of revolutionary festivals, analyzed by historian Mona
Ozouf. The early festivals of 1789–1790 had been spontaneous, emotional expressions of unity—celebrations where
people planted liberty trees, wore cockades, and swore loyalty to the Revolution. But over time, these “savage”
celebrations became organized state rituals.
The Festival of the Federation (1790) was a key moment in this transformation. Across France, at noon, soldiers, National
Guardsmen, and officials took public oaths to defend liberty, protect property, ensure food supply, and uphold taxation.
Ordinary citizens watched from the edges as their symbols—the cockade, the liberty tree, and the patriotic altar—were
incorporated into formal ceremonies.

Through these rituals, the people’s passion and creativity were acknowledged, but also controlled. What began as popular,
emotional expressions of revolution was now transformed into disciplined symbols of the new state—regularized,
celebrated, and politically managed.

The Transformation of Revolutionary Festivals and the Rise of Liberty (Simplified and Briefed)

As revolutionary festivals grew more elaborate, they began to include a wide range of new and complex symbols. Some
were drawn from Biblical or Catholic traditions, but many were inspired by classical antiquity and Freemasonry, making
them more intellectual and less directly popular. The Masonic level symbolized equality, the Roman fasces stood for unity,
the laurel wreath for civic virtue, and the Egyptian eye for vigilance. Female figures represented abstract ideals such as
Liberty, Reason, Nature, Victory, and Charity.

Festivals became large processions filled with allegorical displays, banners, and symbolic “stations” meant to educate
citizens. The saints and priests of the old Catholic order were replaced by new revolutionary figures—officials, civic
leaders, and pageant organizers who enacted the ideals of the Republic.

This effort to control and reshape popular celebration resembled the Counter-Reformation Church’s attempt to discipline
popular religious festivals in the seventeenth century. The revolutionary government did the same with political festivity:
it absorbed spontaneous popular symbols and rituals, redefined them, and presented new state-sanctioned versions for
the people.

The most famous and successful of these was the Goddess of Liberty. Adopted as the seal of the Republic in 1792, Liberty
had already existed in French art before the Revolution—appearing in Moreau’s 1775 painting as a Roman-style woman
wearing a liberty cap. She first appeared during the Revolution on a 1789 medal celebrating Paris’s new municipal
government. Early on, she competed with other symbolic figures such as Mercury, Minerva, and the “genius” of France.

By the late 1790s, however, Liberty became inseparable from the Republic itself. In popular memory, she was
affectionately called “Marianne”—a name originally meant as mockery by royalists but later embraced by republicans as
a symbol of national pride and freedom.

On the Republic’s seal, Liberty was portrayed calmly and nobly, embodying reason and order rather than the chaos of
revolutionary uprisings. Like a saint of the Counter-Reformation, she symbolized the Revolution’s moral and civic ideals—
discipline, universality, and the rejection of superstition and aristocratic privilege.

Yet despite these attempts at control, revolutionary symbolism was not entirely shaped from above. Once officialized,
figures like Liberty/Marianne also became part of popular culture, open to local interpretations and uses. Thus, the
movement of revolutionary symbolism—like that of religion—was never purely one-directional toward discipline; it
remained a dynamic exchange between state authority and popular imagination.

The Festival of Reason and the Transformation of Liberty (Simplified Version)

One of the clearest examples of how revolutionary symbols—especially Liberty—could change meaning was the famous
“Festival of Reason” held on 10 November 1793. Originally planned as a Festival of Liberty by the radical Paris Commune,
it was renamed and reshaped into a “Triumph of Reason.” This shift showed how flexible and politically charged
revolutionary imagery had become.

The festival was moved from the Palais Royal to Notre Dame Cathedral, making the attack on the Catholic Church clear
and deliberate. Notre Dame, once a center of Christian worship, was turned into a temple celebrating human reason
instead of divine faith.
The celebration mixed elite rationalist ideas with popular festive elements, reflecting the Commune’s effort to act as a
bridge between the intellectual revolutionaries in the National Convention and the ordinary Parisians.

At the center of the transformed cathedral stood a mountain, symbolizing the radical “Mountain” faction in the
Convention. On the mountain was a small temple engraved with “À la philosophie” (To Philosophy), and its entrance was
lined with busts of famous Enlightenment thinkers—the philosophes.

According to one organizer, the festival was meant to appeal “directly to the soul,” without the “Greek and Latin
mummery” or “howling instruments” of old religious ceremonies. Instead of church music, a Republican orchestra played
hymns “in common language,” so that the people could easily understand and connect with the songs celebrating truth
and reason rather than mystery and superstition.

The festival’s climax was a striking theatrical scene:

This dramatic ritual turned Liberty into both a goddess and a symbol of reason, replacing the Virgin Mary and the Christian
saints in a sacred space. The transformation of Notre Dame into a temple of philosophy captured the Revolution’s attempt
to replace religion with rational civic faith—making Liberty the new divine figure of the Republic.

The Living Liberty: Symbolism and Popular Appropriation (Simplified Version)

The most remarkable and unexpected feature of the Festival of Reason was the appearance of a living woman
personifying Liberty. Originally, the Paris city government had planned to display a statue of Liberty in place of the Virgin
Mary at Notre Dame. However, shortly before the festival, this idea was replaced with something new—a real woman
would embody Liberty herself. This innovation soon spread to many provincial towns, where similar performances were
held.

The decision to replace a statue with a living woman reflected the Revolution’s desire for a more “natural” and
transparent representation of ideals. Revolutionaries wanted to move away from the old religious practices that
worshipped images or idols. As one newspaper explained, the aim was to break the habit of idolatry—to avoid replacing
one sacred object (like the bread of the Eucharist) with another (a stone idol of Liberty). By using a living woman instead
of a statue, people would not mistake her for a divine being.

The newspaper also reminded citizens that Liberty, Reason, and Truth were abstract ideas, not gods to be worshipped,
but parts of human nature itself. This was meant to teach the people that freedom was not something divine or external—
it existed within them.

However, in practice, the revolutionary ideal clashed with popular tradition. While the radicals wanted Liberty to appear
as an ordinary woman—natural, human, and non-religious—local communities transformed her into something festive
and familiar. Almost everywhere, the chosen Liberty resembled a Carnival queen, often being the most beautiful woman
in the village or neighborhood. She became the people’s queen for a day, celebrated with songs, processions, and joy.

This blending of rational symbolism and popular festivity showed how revolutionary ideals were reshaped by the
people’s own culture. What began as a didactic, anti-religious act turned into a popular celebration.

Importantly, the National Convention—the main revolutionary government—had no official role in organizing this
display. It was the people of Paris, guided by their local government, who created and enacted this powerful scene
themselves. After the festival, the participants even marched to the Convention to invite the deputies to watch a repeat
performance, proudly presenting their own creation.

Thus, the living Liberty became a vivid symbol of the Revolution’s dual nature—rational and emotional, elite and popular,
disciplined and spontaneous.
The Festival of Reason and the Politics of Symbolic Power (Simplified Version)

The Festival of Reason revealed the deep complexities of symbolic power during the French Revolution. It was not a
simple, unified act—it involved multiple forces, each with its own motives and meanings:

• The National Convention (the revolutionary government)

• The Paris city government (the Commune)

• The local activists and organizers

• And the ordinary Parisian people

Each of these groups used symbols like Liberty for different political purposes.

The Convention had introduced the Roman goddess of Liberty as a new national emblem, replacing the king as the central
symbol of authority and legitimacy. The deputies wanted an abstract, classical image—something far removed from
France’s monarchical and religious traditions.

Meanwhile, the Paris city government wanted to use the symbol of Liberty to weaken the influence of Catholicism. The
figure of Liberty—secular and rational—was the perfect counterpart to the Virgin Mary, the central female figure of
Catholic worship. Since both Liberty and Reason were often represented as women, Liberty could easily serve as a secular
rival to the Virgin.

But when the people participated in the festival, they transformed this abstract goddess into something more familiar
and emotionally meaningful. The living Liberty they saw was not a distant Roman figure, but a Carnival queen,
reminiscent of the female figures in traditional religious festivals. In their eyes, she became a warm, celebratory, and
accessible symbol—a reflection of popular festivity rather than elite abstraction.

However, this transformation had limits. The setting of the festival—the decorations, music, and performers—was
designed by the Paris Opera, and the woman who appeared as Liberty was an actress, not an ordinary citizen. Thus, when
the people thought they had made Liberty their own, they found that she was only playing a role, performing for their
moral and political instruction. Liberty was both theirs and not theirs—a symbol created by the people, yet controlled
by elites.

This episode also showed that the struggle over symbols was not confined to revolutionary forces. Counter-revolutionary
or religious groups also used symbolic acts to reclaim influence.

For example, in 1799, in the city of Toulouse, the local administration reported to the Minister of Police about
demonstrations centered on an old statue of the Black Virgin (Notre-Dame-la-Noire). For centuries, this wooden statue
had been part of local Catholic rituals and processions—such as prayers for rain in 1785. During the Revolution, it had
been hidden away, but in 1799 it reappeared.

The people once again flocked to see the statue, offering donations and seeking blessings through objects that had
touched it—handkerchiefs, rings, or books. To the revolutionary administrators, this revival of devotion was intolerable.
They called it a return to ignorance and superstition, unworthy of the “enlightened century.” Enraged, the officials had
the statue burned a few days later.

In both the Festival of Reason and the Black Virgin episode, the same tension appeared: symbols were never neutral.
They were the battlegrounds of belief and power—constantly reinterpreted, reshaped, and fought over by elites and
common people alike.

Carnival, Religion, and Symbolic Resistance to the Revolution (Simplified Summary)

In addition to reviving old religious symbols, the opponents of the Revolution also reclaimed traditional Carnival customs
as a form of symbolic resistance. Carnival, held just before Lent, had long been a period of parades, processions, dances,
and masquerades—often noisy, rebellious, and mocking toward local authorities. People wore masks, cross-dressed, and
behaved in ways that temporarily overturned social order.
During the post-Terror years (after 1794), these practices returned with new political meaning. Members of “anti-
terrorist” groups (those who opposed the Jacobins) began using masks and disguises to hide their identities from the
authorities while taking revenge or causing unrest. This alarmed the revolutionary officials.

In January 1797, the departmental administration of the Gironde (at Bordeaux) passed a decree banning masks,
disguises, and cross-dressing. The commissioner of the Executive Directory explained that masks allowed people to
commit every kind of moral and political crime:

• They enabled revenge and violence against enemies,

• Allowed thieves to steal unnoticed,

• And encouraged reckless behavior that led to “ruin and desolation.”

To the authorities, the mask symbolized disorder and deceit, a threat to the new transparent, rational, and moral order
the Revolution sought to build.

Yet these forms of resistance had deep roots in popular culture. For centuries, masks, saints, and Carnival rituals had
been used by common people to defend their communal identity against attempts by church reformers or local elites to
impose discipline and control. During the Revolution, these older forms gained new political meanings.

Many discontented locals saw revolutionary leaders and republican officials as new versions of the old bishops and
landlords—outsiders trying to control their communities and moral life. For them, Carnival and religious symbols became
tools to mock and resist the Revolution’s authority.

But to committed republicans, these same practices represented everything the Revolution wanted to destroy—
royalism, religious fanaticism, ignorance, superstition, and the darkness of the Old Regime.

Thus, the Black Virgins and Carnival masks stood as direct insults to the ideals of Liberty and transparency. Where the
Revolution promoted the rational citizen—open, moral, and self-controlled—the Carnival and religious revivals
celebrated disguise, emotion, and the past.

In short, the struggle over symbols and rituals mirrored the deeper political battle over what kind of France would emerge
from the Revolution—one rooted in reason and order, or one tied to the emotional, traditional, and festive culture of the
people.

Republican Symbolism, Education, and Political Reformation (Simplified Summary)

Republicans during the French Revolution clearly understood that symbolic battles were never just symbolic—they were
essential to winning hearts and minds. They fought these conflicts with what one might call “rationalistic vengeance,”
determined to replace old religious and monarchical symbols with rational, secular, and republican ones.

In Toulouse, for instance, the republican city administration sought to repurpose old religious spaces for secular use:

• In 1796, they tried to buy a chapel to store grain.

• Later that year, they attempted to convert a Carmelite convent into a botanical museum.

• By 1798, they proposed turning the same convent into a grain market.

To them, these were practical, modern uses of space; but to others—especially Catholics—these acts symbolized the
destruction of faith and tradition. People who continued to venerate icons like the Black Virgin did so, at least in part, to
protest the Revolution’s de-Christianizing measures.

Republicans often felt baffled by this hostility. When accused of being a “terrorist,” one local official insisted that he
followed the “mellow philanthropy” of Enlightenment thinkers like Rousseau, Voltaire, and Helvétius. Yet his devotion
to reason and progress inevitably put him in conflict with the Church and its symbols.

To overcome this, revolutionaries realized they needed to educate the public—to teach citizens how to read the new
political symbols of Liberty, Equality, and the Republic, instead of the old icons of the Church and monarchy.
As Romme stated in his 1793 report:

“The Constitution will give the nation a political and social existence; public instruction will give it a moral and intellectual
existence.”

This belief led to massive education reforms. The Church’s control over schooling was ended, and education was declared
secular, public, and accessible to all children. The traditional “schoolmaster” was replaced by the instituteur—literally
“the one who founds new values.”

Though financial and practical limits meant that most plans were only partially realized, the goal was clear: create a new
generation of moral and rational republicans. Children were to study:

• The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen,

• The geography of the Republic,

• Republican poems, hymns, and civic virtues,

• Basic literacy, arithmetic, and natural history.

Teachers, however, were often untrained, underpaid, or unsympathetic, making the process uneven.

Since they couldn’t wait for children to grow up, republicans turned to re-educating adults—especially through the army,
which became a “Jacobin school” between 1792 and 1794. Deputies sent on mission to the front supervised officers,
arrested traitors, and spread revolutionary propaganda.

They distributed bulletins, proclamations, and newspapers—including mass copies of Le Père Duchesne and Le Journal
des hommes libres—to soldiers. At one point, up to 30,000 newspapers were sent daily to the army. Victory festivals
and civic ceremonies reinforced this republican message.

As one lieutenant explained:

“The soldier is good-hearted, but he needs to be enlightened.”

Through education, propaganda, and ritual, republicans sought to replace the Church’s symbols and moral order with a
new civic religion of reason, virtue, and patriotic unity. In their view, winning the symbolic war—in schools, churches,
and festivals—was as crucial as winning any military battle for the Republic itself.

This passage explores how the French Revolution sought to “educate” both officials and citizens into republican virtue,
creating a new kind of state power rooted in participation, surveillance, and pedagogy rather than mere coercion.

1. Educating Officials and Creating Bureaucratic Discipline

After the radical phase of 1792, revolutionary leaders believed that even government officials needed moral and
intellectual reformation to serve the Republic. The state issued an enormous quantity of manuals, bulletins, and
standardized forms to guide and discipline administrators. Reports flowed upward—from municipalities to departments
to Paris—ensuring hierarchical surveillance and ideological uniformity.

A letter from a Directory commissioner in the Vendée exemplifies this new bureaucratic rationality. He demanded
“methodical precision,” “reasoned results,” and “exactness,” reflecting the revolutionary obsession with rational order
and zeal. Bureaucracy was not just an administrative necessity; it became part of a political pedagogy, teaching officials
how to think and behave as republican citizens.

The commissioner’s phrase “perfectioning of the political machine” captures this ambition: the Revolution imagined itself
as a vast educational apparatus designed to produce virtue through rational routine.

2. Standardization as Political Discipline

• Metric system: replaced local measures with universal rational units.

• Revolutionary calendar: replaced the seven-day week and saints’ days with ten-day “decades” named after
natural phenomena (e.g., Germinal, Floréal, Prairial).

• Language reform: aimed for everyone to “speak the same language.”

• Even clocks were decimalized, as in Toulouse, so that time itself bore witness to the Revolution.

These reforms turned abstract revolutionary ideals into tangible daily practices, fusing political symbolism with
administrative rationality.

3. The Local Dimension of Revolutionary Power

Although Paris organized the state, revolutionary innovations often emerged locally. Municipalities and departments
experimented with educational and bureaucratic reform even before the National Convention had acted. The Revolution
was therefore not a one-way imposition from above—it was a reciprocal process, where local zeal sustained central
authority.

In practice, the Revolution’s strength came from grassroots political energy: clubs, societies, and newspapers took
responsibility for spreading republican virtue.

4. Clubs, Newspapers, and Civic Education

Throughout 1792–93, political mobilization occurred outside official institutions. Popular societies, women’s clubs, and
artisan associations became training grounds for republican citizenship.

In Bordeaux, for example, artisans founded a “patriotic society” to read decrees and newspapers, believing that “every
man is a member of the state” and must therefore be prepared for public administration.
Such practices transformed everyday life into acts of political participation—reading, sewing banners, writing minutes,
donating money, or wearing cockades became expressions of civic virtue.

Power, therefore, was not concentrated in one faction or office, but diffused across society through innumerable small,
symbolic acts. This is what the text calls “microtechniques” of power—everyday gestures through which people learned
to embody the Revolution.

5. From Political Rhetoric to Pedagogical Reality

However, the Revolution’s faith in moral transparency conflicted with its need for relentless pedagogy. Revolutionary
ideology claimed that the people’s will was naturally just and virtuous—“engraved in every man’s heart.” In theory, once
oppression was lifted, virtue would shine spontaneously, making politics almost unnecessary.

Robespierre embodied this belief when he said that virtue belonged to the poor and simple; if hearts were pure, society
would govern itself. But reality contradicted this optimism. Ignorance and superstition persisted, and revolutionary
leaders found themselves enforcing virtue rather than trusting it.

Thus arose the paradox: the Republic of transparency required constant didacticism—education, surveillance,
propaganda—to sustain itself.

Robespierre’s own confession, “We have raised the temple of liberty with hands still withered by the irons of despotism,”
reveals this dilemma: freedom had to be built by people still shaped by tyranny.

By the decade’s end, Madame de Staël would reflect that “the Republic arrived in France before the enlightenment
which should have prepared the way for it.”
6. The Paradox of Revolutionary Power

The Revolution’s project of regeneration depended on mass education, bureaucratic zeal, and the politicization of daily
life. These efforts expanded the state’s reach but also multiplied the points at which ordinary people could claim
participation in power.

Yet the same system that aimed for transparency and reason also demanded constant instruction and supervision. In
trying to perfect “the political machine,” the Revolution discovered both the creative power and the disciplinary danger
of politicizing every corner of life.

This passage deepens the earlier discussion about the Revolution’s paradoxical drive to create transparency through
didactic control, showing how that tension shaped the very symbols and language of revolutionary politics.

1. The Core Tension: Transparency vs. Didacticism

The Revolution aimed to create a transparent political culture, where the people’s will and the state’s authority were
identical—where nothing was hidden or obscure. Yet, in practice, the state constantly felt the need to teach, guide, and
interpret the meaning of symbols and events.

This produced a paradox:

• If the people’s voice was naturally virtuous and clear, why did it need so much instruction?

• But if the people could not yet interpret symbols “correctly,” then the Revolution needed to educate them
through didactic control.

Thus, didacticism (instruction) was justified as a necessary step toward transparency (spontaneous virtue). The
Revolution claimed to be restoring the people’s voice, yet it also sought to discipline how that voice was expressed and
understood.

2. Popular vs. Official Symbols

This conflict was visible in the treatment of revolutionary symbols.

• Popularly invented symbols—like the tricolor cockade or the liberty tree—emerged spontaneously from the
people and expressed collective enthusiasm.

• Official symbols, such as the female personification of Liberty, were deliberately imposed by the state to guide
popular imagination.

Officials recognized that they could not ignore popular imagery, since it represented the “authentic” voice of the people.
But they also feared that unregulated symbolism could foster confusion or rebellion. Therefore, they tried to appropriate
and discipline these symbols, giving them “correct” meanings aligned with republican virtue and reason.

In short, popular spontaneity had to be contained within pedagogical order.

3. Words vs. Images: The Politics of Expression

The same tension appeared in the contrast between verbal and visual communication.

• The people’s political language was often visual and symbolic—maypoles, masks, placards, festivals.

• Revolutionary leaders, however, believed in the superiority of words, especially written and printed texts,
because they could be explained, clarified, and standardized.
The Revolution’s leaders attached moral and intellectual value to prose, speech, and inscription. Words were not only
the sign of liberty but also a means of discipline: they told citizens how to think and interpret what they saw.

Judith Schlanger calls this tendency the “discursive foundation of political didacticism”—the belief that saying clarifies
what showing leaves ambiguous.

Hence, while a peasant’s maypole or a popular banner could express emotion and defiance, official festivals always
required printed programs, explanatory speeches, and inscriptions—verbal anchors that controlled the meaning of the
spectacle.

4. The Need for Constant Clarification

Revolutionary symbols were never stable. The Revolution’s “mythic present” kept changing: new heroes appeared, new
festivals were created, and old icons were reinterpreted or banned.
Because of this permanent flux, images required continuous verbal commentary. Each new event or festival needed
speeches, banners, and printed explanations to ensure ideological coherence.

This endless textual accompaniment had several purposes:

• It directed attention to the correct revolutionary message.

• It repressed alternative or “wrong” interpretations.

• It maintained continuity despite rapid political change—ensuring that meaning remained constant even when
people, symbols, and institutions did not.

Thus, the Revolution’s political culture became a continuous act of explanation—a process in which words disciplined
images, and ideology disciplined emotion.

5. Broader Implications

This dynamic reveals that revolutionary power depended on interpretation as much as coercion.
While popular enthusiasm produced new symbols of liberty, equality, and fraternity, the state worked ceaselessly to
control how these symbols were understood.

The Revolution therefore oscillated between democratic openness and pedagogical authority—between empowering
the people and instructing them on how to be free.
In trying to build a transparent political order, it created an interpretive bureaucracy of meaning, where every banner,
festival, and ritual required textual explanation to ensure orthodoxy.

The most striking example of how revolutionary symbols could change meaning was the “Festival of Reason” in 1793.
Originally planned as a festival honoring Liberty, it was turned into a “Triumph of Reason” by the radical Paris
government. The event was moved from the Palais Royal to Notre Dame Cathedral to make its anti-Catholic message
clear.

The festival mixed elite Enlightenment ideals with popular revolutionary culture, as the Paris Commune saw itself as a
bridge between rationalist leaders and common Parisians. In the cathedral’s center stood a mountain, symbolizing the
political “Mountain” faction, topped with a temple to Philosophy surrounded by busts of famous philosophers.

A Republican orchestra played simple, secular music instead of church hymns, emphasizing reason and truth over
religion. Young girls in white, crowned with laurel, carried torches up and down the mountain. Finally, Liberty,
portrayed as a beautiful woman, emerged from the temple and took her seat on a green throne, receiving the people’s
homage.

This event symbolized the Revolution’s attempt to replace religious faith with reason and Christian worship with civic
ritual.
The search for a revolutionary costume reflected the contradictions of revolutionary politics. Artist Jacques-Louis
David designed official and civilian costumes meant to express equality and unity, but they also highlighted hierarchy
and difference. While David wanted everyone to share a national uniform to erase social distinctions, he also believed
that judges, legislators, and officials should wear slightly different attire—such as ankle-length cloaks—so that citizens
could recognize them.

This showed a deeper tension: representatives of the people were supposed to be like the people, yet also distinct as
their leaders and guides. Thus, clothing became a political symbol—intended to reflect both unity and authority.

After Robespierre’s fall, the idea of a common civilian costume faded, but the plan for official dress continued. In 1795,
the Convention passed a law prescribing special costumes for members of the Directory, Councils, ministers, judges,
and local administrators.

According to Abbé Grégoire’s 1795 report, official costume had a moral and symbolic function. It was part of the
“language of signs,” inspiring respect, order, and justice. Costumes were not meant to be disguises but visible
expressions of the law and republican values. They reminded citizens that these officials represented their collective
will, encouraging both discipline and respect within the new political order.

When Abbé Grégoire spoke in 1795, he wanted to move away from the democratic chaos and “excesses” of the Reign
of Terror. He believed that official costume could help bring order and discipline to French politics. Distinct clothing for
legislators, he said, would not only mark their authority but also calm the restless, disorderly atmosphere that had
characterized revolutionary assemblies. By giving deputies a dignified, stable appearance, the costume would restore
decorum and seriousness to government sessions and symbolize the majesty of the nation.

For Grégoire, something as small as a toga had deep political meaning—it helped establish the difference between the
rulers and the ruled, making clear who represented the nation and who were its citizens. The costume thus became a
tool for defining political hierarchy and representation, moving away from the earlier revolutionary idea of equality in
appearance.

His report proposed robes of different colors and velvet hats, using only French-made fabric in red, white, and blue—
the national colors. However, by 1797, the plan was simplified so that all deputies wore the same attire: a “French” blue
coat, tricolor belt, scarlet cloak in Greek style, and a velvet hat with tricolor decoration.

When finally adopted, the costumes were seen as both beautiful and imposing, though some critics felt the bright red
fatigued the eyes and gave the assembly a theatrical look rather than true dignity. Still, regular use of these garments
was expected to create a sense of stability, respect, and legitimacy—transforming revolutionary politics from a scene of
popular turbulence into one of disciplined republican order.

During the Directory period (1795–1799), debates about civilian dress continued even though the idea of a national
civilian uniform had been abandoned. Clothing was still seen as a form of personal freedom—officially declared a right
in 1793—yet political symbols in dress remained controversial. For instance, in 1798, the Council of Five Hundred
discussed punishing those who refused to wear the national cockade and banning foreigners from wearing it.

Beyond government chambers, clothing and appearance continued to serve as powerful political markers. An
illustrated pamphlet, Caricatures politiques (1798), identified five “classes” of republicans, distinguishable not only by
their principles but also by their dress and behavior.

Among them, the “independents” were seen as true republicans—educated, confident, and respectable. They wore
clean, neat clothing, such as fine trousers, ankle boots, morning coats, and round hats, projecting dignity and
discipline.

In contrast, the “exclusives,” linked with the sans-culottes, had a rough, aggressive appearance. Their hair was messy,
clothes often dirty or poorly made, and they wore short wool jackets, simple trousers, and crude shoes. They were
known for their outlandish hats and habit of smoking short clay pipes, symbolizing their lower-class, rebellious identity.
Thus, under the Directory, dress remained a battleground of political identity—a visible way of distinguishing between
moderate republicans and radical militants, reflecting the continuing struggle over what it meant to look and act like a
true citizen of the Revolution.

Even after the fall of Robespierre, dress remained politically significant under the Directory (1795–1799), even though
the legislature had abandoned the idea of a civilian uniform. Clothing was still considered a personal freedom, officially
declared a right in 1793, yet debates continued—by 1798, the Council of Five Hundred even considered punishing
citizens who did not wear the national cockade and banning foreigners from wearing it.

Outside the legislature, dress and appearance remained a powerful way to signal political allegiance. An illustrated
1798 pamphlet, Caricatures politiques, described five “classes” of republicans, each identifiable not only by their ideas
but also by their clothing and behavior.

The “independents” were regarded as the true republicans—educated, dignified, and respectable. They dressed neatly,
wearing fine trousers, morning coats, ankle boots, and round hats, symbolizing moderation and discipline. In contrast,
the “exclusives,” or militant sans-culottes, appeared rough and disorderly, with messy hair, dirty wool clothes, crude
shoes, and clay pipes—signs of their lower-class and radical identity.

As the Revolution progressed, defining the “look” of a republican became increasingly complex. Even among
republicans, distinctions in dress reflected political and moral hierarchies. While revolutionaries had sought to abolish
class-based clothing distinctions of the Old Regime, they still believed that dress revealed inner character and political
virtue.

At its core, revolutionary political culture viewed dress as politically transparent—a person’s appearance reflected
their beliefs. This belief led some to imagine an ideal civilian uniform where all citizens, as equals, would look alike,
symbolizing unity, virtue, and the end of social divisions.

Republicans understood that France was still far from being truly free — the people themselves needed to be reshaped
into republican citizens. In this view, dress was not just a reflection of character but a tool to transform it. Wearing a
national uniform would make citizens more unified and patriotic, just as speaking standard French instead of local
dialects would strengthen civic identity. Similarly, legislators wearing red togas were expected to behave more
seriously, symbolizing republican virtue. Thus, dress was seen as a means to create character, not merely express it.

However, the political meaning of dress became more complicated because of republican confusion over equality. The
Directory politicians sought to distance themselves from the extremes of the Terror, promoting moderation. The
author of Caricatures politiques contrasted the refined “independents” (good republicans) with the rough “exclusives”
(sans-culottes). This distinction revealed clear bourgeois values — good republicans were expected to dress neatly and
modestly, like the middle class, avoiding both aristocratic luxury and sans-culotte roughness.

Even during the Terror, leaders like Abbé Grégoire criticized vulgar behavior and language, viewing such “coarseness” as
counterrevolutionary. Clean speech, manners, and dress were seen as marks of true republican virtue. The elite
believed the lower classes could be improved by imitation of their “betters,” not by equalizing behavior or style.

The real confusion over equality, however, was political rather than social. Most Jacobin leaders did not believe all
people could be socially equal; their concern was political participation — the relationship between the people and
their representatives. The Revolution had encouraged the people to engage directly in politics through petitions,
protests, and assemblies. When the National Assembly moved to Paris in 1789, it came into close contact with the
vocal and active Parisians. By 1793, in the Convention’s new meeting space at the Tuileries, audience participation
became literal, as citizens loudly expressed approval or disapproval.

Leaders like Robespierre even suggested that the Convention should build a hall large enough for 12,000 spectators, so
that the general will and public reason could be directly heard. This showed how deeply the Revolution was invested in
popular participation, even as it struggled to balance it with order, hierarchy, and the ideal of republican virtue.
After the radical phase of democracy in 1793–94, the writers of the Constitution of Year III (1795) sought to restore
order and stability by limiting public participation in politics. Having witnessed the excesses of mass involvement,
Robespierre’s successors aimed to clearly separate the people from their representatives. They believed that for a
stable republic, the political arena must be distinct and governed by respect and discipline rather than popular
turbulence.

As Abbé Grégoire argued, official costumes would serve this purpose — not to restore social hierarchy, but to create
political hierarchy. Legislators, judges, and officials were not socially superior, but they were politically distinct. The
idea was that official dress could bring clarity and respect to political life by marking the representatives as voices of the
nation and reducing confusion in political interpretation.

However, these efforts did not work as smoothly as intended. The bright red togas meant to symbolize republican
virtue failed to prevent the rise of Napoleon, and many of the very men who wore them helped usher him to power.
This showed that republicanism was more a mindset than a matter of dress. Yet, the experience taught valuable
lessons: for a republic to survive, it needed new civic habits, a disciplined political culture, and a well-educated
citizenry that respected its institutions.

Though the Republic of the 1790s eventually collapsed, its symbols and rituals endured. The tricolor flag, Marianne,
the Phrygian cap, republican banquets, and the motto “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” became lasting emblems of
French political identity. These symbols, tested in the turmoil of revolutionary politics, created a collective memory and
tradition of republicanism that lived on through the Third Republic and beyond. The republicans of the 1790s were not
mere dreamers — their struggles and symbols laid the foundation for modern French republicanism.