请将“Courage was needed by all who set this development in motion, if it was not to be restricted in this way. But when they found this courage, they acted in the context of a political public that had developed in March and April of this year.
If the announcement of the états généraux in 1789 had a different effect than in 1615, this was not only due to the specific election procedure and the struc-tural crisis of generalised power, but also to the - above mentioned - actual generalisation of rule, the improved possibility of distributing information and the content of contemporary debates over 'good order'. The organisation of a political public, however, was not least among the structural preconditions for the Revolution. Altogether, over 100,000 men took part in the election of deputies to the états généraux, some 60,000 of these being members of the Third Estate.26 It would be risky to estimate how many of these latter had taken part in the assemblies. It will suffice here to establish that, in March and April 1789, a large public consultation of the king's subjects was held. This was directed at ‘everyone' - excluding women, servants, the unfree, the mad and the very poor. But even the grievances of the excluded were sometimes made known in the spring and summer of this year. There appeared cahiers of the ‘fourth estate' and of ‘women', no matter who their authors were. Many of these cahiers make abundantly clear the structural change in the public sphere. They are directed no longer at the government, but rather at the political public.
In June and again in August, two decisive new structural features of this public became clear: the public demonstrations in Versailles and Paris, and the loss of the power basis that could have hemmed it in. Jean Michaud27 per-tinently indicated the importance of the former. According to him, as early as June 1789 there were debates in Versailles in which a wide public took part. Inhabitants of the town were present, but many came each day from Paris, some in carriages but most on foot.28 The crown sought to obstruct this expression, but the guards regiments did not stop anyone from arriving in Versailles. The attendance at these assemblies was not just a passive audience, but, rather, an element of the social context in which the delegates developed their arguments. This manifest and active public created a framework of thinking and action in which ideas previously unheard were expressed for the first time, even if they had already been thought. This meant, however, that even the delegates were no longer mere bearers of those interests that they and their electors would have recognised as their own some months or even weeks before. If the delegates had just soberly considered their material interests, they would scarcely have decided to attack the foundations of former legality - in the revolutionary vocabulary, the ‘abolition of feudalism' - that they decided on the night of 4-5 August 1789.
True, news of the peasant disturbances29 in various districts had given new urgency to demands already contained in the cahiers, and led many to consider whether some of their former privileges might not have to be sacrificed; the session of 4 August had also been previously discussed in the Club Breton. But no one could have foreseen that such a large number of the pillars of the ancien régime would be overthrown in a single sitting, lasting from eight in the evening to two the next morning, to cheers and acclamation. It was quite in the style of the time - precisely when Mesmer's electrical apparatus had become the fashion - that Mirabeau told his voters that the process was the result of an electrical frenzy. Without a break, one electrical shock followed another in the Assembly.30 It was one of those situations in which speech is no longer just a means of expression, but a political event that creates facts. When the deputies woke up from their sleep and considered the reaction of their electors, this intoxication evaporated. As the results of the session of 4 August had to be made into formal decisions in the course of the following days, attempts were made to tone them down. Thus ‘feudal' dues were still ‘abolished', but only in so far as those who had previously had to pay them now received the right to buy their release from them. Other things, however, such as the purchase of office and the right to inherit offices, the privilege of multiple sinecures in the church, the nobles' hunting privileges and the tax privileges of towns - privileges that had been hardly won and bitterly defended - were abandoned without contradiction to the applause of the assembly. This ‘noble rush of joy' (Mirabeau) developed in a public that had been revolutionised in the process of its constitution.
The mode of operation of this new social organ can be seen for example in the report of an English doctor. Dr Rigby had arrived in Paris in July 1789, and explained in a letter to his family of 11 August the happenings in Paris and Versailles:
We had not been long in Paris when we found that the Palais Royal, a large square lately built by the Duke of Orleans, was the place where all political intelligence was to be obtained; for it was here all persons assembled who took a part in the great political drama - here that political questions were first discussed - and popular resolutions formed and arrangements made; here, as well, that the earliest communications from the National Assembly, which holds its sittings at Versailles, twelve miles from Paris, were received, and that the printed debates of the Assembly were first circulated	
The address of the Assembly to the King had just been read when we entered the square, and also the spirited debate on the King's answer. Mirabeau had been distinguished in both of these, and especially in the latter; the whole place resounded with his praise, and the warmest tribute of applause was 31
paid to the Assembly for its firmness.
Rigby mentions an important innovation in this letter. Already in the first few weeks of the Revolution, not only had the number of press organs dramatically risen - a total of 135 new papers were established in Paris alone in the course of the year - not only were new leaflets and posters printed, but the beginning was made of printing at night so as to appear on sale the next morning.
During the Revolution, the purchasers of printed matter changed, and with them the marketing strategies of the publishers, but what changed above all was the relationship between press and readership. Because press and public merged into a unity of action, the least events were publicised, and it was left up to readers to assess their significance.32
News spread throughout the kingdom by way of the press, reports of depu-ties, and chance sources of information. This does not mean, however, that the public for social transformation was constituted on the basis of Versailles and Paris. It was, above all, in the countryside that the hopes that had arisen in the previous winter and new year developed from rumour and as a continuation of the resistance of the winter months into a dynamic that was not indepen-dent of the centre, but had its own autonomy. Differently from in the towns, the public in the countryside initially followed quite traditional forms. Even the Great Fear, which led peasants in the Franche-Comté, and then in adjacent regions to the south-east and south-west, to take up arms in late July and early August, was nothing new. This time, however, peasants feared an aristocratic plot - after rumours reached them of the beginnings of emigration - by which all the changes that had been won or were still hoped for would be brought to naught. The Great Fear is also indicative of the structures of the public sphere, showing how in summer 1789 many peasants still received news of the events in Versailles and Paris initially by way of rumour. The revolutionary public was constituted in a variety of different forms.
Everywhere, however, this was still without barricades. Paris had seen bar-ricades in 1588, but in 1789 these appeared only for a few hours on 13 July. This fact is immensely significant, showing how ‘the public' could 'make' the Revolution because the old system was undefended. This had held already in the spring and summer for the peasant resistance and bread revolts, and in summer and autumn it held for the foundation of the National Assembly and the municipal revolution in Paris. More than a few historians have been led by this to conclude that revolutions led by the bourgeoisie are overwhelmingly peaceful, while those forced by the popular masses are violent. For François Furet and Denis Richet, the period from 1789 to 1791 saw the victories of the eighteenth century, by which they mean that the liberal revolution was the work of an enlightened intellectual élite. Only the popular revolution of 10 August 1792:
and the war against Prussia and Austria had brought a temporary halt to the great advance of the bourgeoisie that was eventually to lead to the peaceful [sic] liberalism of the nineteenth century.33
Even if we leave aside here whether the so-called journées of the Revolution, the threat and sometimes reality of violent action in which many people par-ticipated, were indispensable elements of political development or not, it need not be underlined here that the 'liberal revolution' was able to remain peaceful only because it did not come against violent opposition. The debates of the Constituante could abolish the ancien régime because the streets belonged to the revolutionary public. This predominance did not need to be either won or defended on the barricades.”翻译为中文