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The opening events of the French Revolution have stood as some of the most familiar in modern European history. Traumatic Politics emerges as a fresh voice from the existing historiography of this widely studied course of events. In applying a psychological lens to the classic problem of why the French Revolution’s first representative assembly was unable to reach a workable accommodation with Louis XVI, Barry Shapiro contends that some of the key political decisions made by the Constituent Assembly were, in large measure, the product of traumatic reactions to the threats to the lives of its members in the summer of 1789. As a result, Assembly policy frequently reflected a preoccupation with what had happened in the past rather than active engagement with present political realities. In arguing that the manner in which the Assembly dealt with the king bears the imprint of the behavior that typically follows exposure to traumatic events, Shapiro focuses on oscillating periods of traumatic repetition and traumatic denial. Highlighting the historical impact of what could be viewed as a relatively “mild” trauma, he suggests that trauma theory has a much wider field of potential applicability than that previously established by historians, who have generally confined themselves to studying the impact of massively traumatic events such as war and genocide. Moreover, in emphasizing the extent to which monarchical loyalties remained intact on the eve of the Revolution, this book also challenges the widely accepted contention that prerevolutionary cultural and discursive innovations had “desacralized” the king well before 1789.

The opening events of the French Revolution have stood as some of the most familiar in modern European history. Traumatic Politics emerges as a fresh voice from the existing historiography of this widely studied course of events. In applying a psychological lens to the classic problem of why the French Revolution's first representative assembly was unable to reach a workable accommodation with Louis XVI, Barry Shapiro contends that some of the key political decisions made by the Constituent Assembly were, in large measure, the product of traumatic reactions to the threats to the lives of its members in the summer of 1789. As a result, Assembly policy frequently reflected a preoccupation with what had happened in the past rather than active engagement with present political realities. In arguing that the manner in which the Assembly dealt with the king bears the imprint of the behavior that typically follows exposure to traumatic events, Shapiro focuses on oscillating periods of traumatic repetition and traumatic denial. Highlighting the historical impact of what could be viewed as a relatively \"mild\" trauma, he suggests that trauma theory has a much wider field of potential applicability than that previously established by historians, who have generally confined themselves to studying the impact of massively traumatic events such as war and genocide. Moreover, in emphasizing the extent to which monarchical loyalties remained intact on the eve of the Revolution, this book also challenges the widely accepted contention that prerevolutionary cultural and discursive innovations had \"desacralized\" the king well before 1789.

Of all the members of theConstituent Assembly, it was the comte de Mirabeau who was perhaps best equipped and best prepared to exercise the effective parliamentary leadership that would have been necessary to lay the groundwork for the emergence of a viable system of constitutional monarchy from the revolutionary upheaval of the summer of 1789. Despite a scandalous past and a questionable moral reputation, Mirabeau’s “influence was immense,” as Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret has written, “because many deputies saw him as a man of great ability who was capable of conducting the Revolution in a reasonable direction.”¹ Or, as Timothy Tackett

In the midst of the blackest plots that rage could conceive, never has a revolution more complete and more swift taken place more peacefully and with less cost. More than 20,000 troops, the majority foreigners, had been summoned and had already arrived; the general staff was going to establish itself at Saint-Cloud and a full artillery train from Flanders had been dispatched: all communications with Paris were going to be intercepted and perhaps they were going to starve this immense city; perhaps they wanted to carry out other atrocities against Paris and against Versailles. We were not even safe ourselves: violent

In examining the emotional impactof early revolutionary events upon the deputies of the Third Estate, this chapter discusses some of the subtle shifts in attitude toward the king that can be detected in their letters and diaries as it slowly began to dawn on them that, far from being “on their side,” Louis XVI was actually emerging as a serious threat to them. As is well known to historians of the early stages of the Revolution,most of the deputies dealt with this dawning realization by having recourse to some version of the classic “good king, evil advisers” formula, that

Over the past two centuries,very few of the revolutionary activists and militants who have confronted the forces of authority in a wide variety of settings have been under any illusion as to the life-and-death nature of revolutionary struggle, in part because of the wide circulation of information and commentary regarding the violent turn of events in France at the end of the eighteenth century. By contrast, the lawyers, government officials, businessmen, and other professional and commercial types who were elected to represent the Third Estate in 1789 can by no means be seen as self-conscious revolutionaries, and had in

The defensive maneuver of shiftingblame onto evil advisers seems to have been particularly well suited to insulating many of the Third Estate deputies from the guilt feelings that might otherwise have accompanied their rebellious conduct. Could this maneuver also have helped the deputies, if only temporarily, contain the fear of the royal government that would accompany its clear emergence as a political adversary, and that would eventually produce the traumatic reactions that would, I will argue, have such a significant impact upon their future policies?¹ As feelings of guilt and remorse appear far less likely to arise in a

Although the attack upon theNational Assembly that had been anticipated on the night of 14 July failed to materialize, tension remained high among the deputies the following morning. A revolutionary municipal government had taken control of Paris and royal troops had been withdrawn from their base on the Champ de Mars, but the baron de Breteuil and his reactionary government had not yet been removed from office, and the royal military presence in the Paris/Versailles area was still largely intact, with several regiments still en route. Moreover, the Assembly received reports that morning that troops had intercepted a large convoy

Arguing that the “revolutionarymaximalism” of the deputies of the Constituent Assembly led them to fashion a political system that was “entirely republican in spirit,” François Furet, unquestionably the most influential French revolutionary historian of the past forty years, contended throughout most of his career that there was never a serious possibility that the Assembly could have established a viable constitutional monarchy.¹ With the monarch reduced to insignificance in the minds of the deputies before the opening of the Estates-General, the Assembly “could never,” in Furet’s words, “have offered the king of the Ancien Régime anything more than limited power

During the first two weeks ofJuly 1789, the royal government was assembling “une véritable petite armée” in the vicinity of Versailles and Paris to deal with the challenge being mounted to its authority by the National Assembly and the increasingly active popular forces backing the deputies.¹ Having summoned more than 16,000 troops between 26 June and 1 July to reinforce the approximately 7,000 troops normally present in the Paris/Versailles area and the more than 4,000 who had been sent for in April, May, and early June, the government was in the process of putting together a total force of