(; French for , ; ), is the national motto of France and the Republic of Haiti, and is an example of a tripartite motto. Although its origins can be traced to the French Revolution, it was then only one motto among several popularized by revolutionaries and was not institutionalized until the Third Republic at the end of the 19th century. (abridged translation, Realms of Memory, Columbia University Press, 1996–98). Debates concerning the compatibility and order of the three terms began at the same time as the Revolution. It is also the motto of the Grand Orient and the Grande Loge de France. During the German occupation of France during World War II, the collaborationist independent French State adopted the variation "travail, famille, patrie ().
History
Origins during the French Revolution
Some claim that Camille Desmoulins invented the phrase the 35th issue of Révolutions de France et de Brabant that was published on 26 July 1790;Hervé Leuwers, Camille et Lucile Desmoulins, Un rêve de république, p. 162 however, it is not confirmed as this is only the first official mention of the phrase. Speaking at the July 1790 Fête de la Fédération festival, he described "the citizen-soldiers rushing into each other's arms, promising each other liberty, equality, fraternity" (French: les soldats-citoyens se précipiter dans les bras l'un de l'autre, en se promettant liberté, égalité, fraternité).Camille Desmoulins, Révolutions de France et de Brabant, Number 35, p. 515 Several months later, Maximilien Robespierre popularized the phrase in his speech "On the Organization of the National Guard" (), held on 5 December 1790, which was disseminated widely throughout France by the popular societies.
Credit for the motto has been given also to Antoine-François Momoro (1756–1794), a Parisian printer and Hébertist organizer.
During the Federalist revolts in 1793, it was altered to "Unity, Indivisibility of the Republic; Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood or Death" (). In 1839, the philosopher Pierre Leroux claimed it had been an anonymous and popular creation.
The historian Mona Ozouf underlines that although liberté and égalité were associated as a motto during the 18th century, fraternité was not always included in it, and other terms, such as amitié ("Friendship"), charité ("Charity"), or union ("Union") were often added in its place.
In 1791, the emphasis upon Fraternité during the French Revolution, led Olympe de Gouges, a female journalist, to write the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen as a response.. The tripartite motto was neither a creative collection, nor really institutionalized by the Revolution. As soon as 1789, other terms were used, such as la Nation, la Loi, le Roi ("The Nation, The Law, The King"), or Union, Force, Vertu ("Union, Strength, Virtue"), a slogan used beforehand by Masonic lodges masonic lodges, or Force, Égalité, Justice ("Strength, Equality, Justice"), and Liberté, Sûreté, Propriété ("Liberty, Security, Property").
In other words, liberté, égalité, fraternité was one slogan among many others. During the Jacobin revolutionary period, various mottos were used, such as liberté, unité, égalité ("Liberty, Unity, Equality"), liberté, égalité, justice ("Liberty, Equality, Justice"), and liberté, raison, égalité ("Liberty, Reason, Equality"). The only solid association was that of liberté and égalité, with fraternité being ignored by the Cahiers de doléances as well as by the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
Fraternité was only alluded to in the French Constitution of 1791, as well as in Robespierre's draft Declaration of 1793, placed under the invocation of (in that order) égalité, liberté, sûreté, and propriété ("Equality, Liberty, Safety, Property")—although it was used not as a motto but as articles of declaration, as the possibility of a universal extension of the Declaration of Rights: "Men of all countries are brothers, he who oppresses one nation declares himself the enemy of all." Fraternité did not figure in the August 1793 Declaration. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789 defined "liberty" in Article 4 as follows:
"Equality" was defined by the Declaration in terms of judicial equality and merit-based entry to government (art. 6):
finds its origins in a May 1791 proposition by the Club des Cordeliers, following a speech on the Army by the Marquis de Guichardin. A British marine held prisoner on the French ship Le Marat in 1794, wrote home in letters published in 1796:.
The compatibility of liberté and égalité was not in doubt in the first days of the Revolution, and the problem of the antecedence of one term on the other not lifted. Abbé Sieyès considered that only liberty ensured equality, unless equality was to be the equality of all, dominated by a despot, while liberty followed equality ensured by the rule of law. The abstract generality of law, theorized by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his 1762 book The Social Contract, thus ensured the identification of liberty to equality, liberty being negatively defined as an independence from arbitrary rule, and equality considered abstractly in its judicial form.
This identification of liberty and equality became problematic during the Jacobin period, when equality was redefined, for instance, by François-Noël Babeuf, as equality of results, and not only a judicial equality of rights. Thus, Marc Antoine Baudot considered that the French temperament was inclined more towards equality than liberty, a theme which was re-used by Pierre Louis Roederer and Alexis de Tocqueville. Jacques Necker considered that an equal society could only be found on coercion.
The third term, fraternité, was the most problematic to insert in the triad, as it belonged to another sphere, that of moral obligations rather than rights, links rather than statutes, harmony rather than contract, and community rather than individual liberty. Various interpretations of fraternité existed. The first one, according to Mona Ozouf, was one of fraternité de rébellion ("Fraternity of Rebellion"), that is the union of the deputies in the Jeu de Paume Oath of June 1789, refusing the dissolution ordered by the King Louis XVI ("We swear never to separate ourselves from the National Assembly, and to reassemble wherever circumstances require, until the constitution of the realm is drawn up and fixed upon solid foundations"). "Fraternity" was thus issued from "liberty", and oriented by a common cause.
Another form of fraternité was that of the patriotic Church, which identified social links with religious links and based fraternity on Christian brotherhood. In this second sense, fraternité preceded both liberté and égalité, instead of following them as in the first sense. Thus, two senses of fraternity: "one, that followed liberty and equality, was the object of a free pact; the other preceded liberty and equality as the mark on its work of the divine craftsman."
Another hesitation concerning the compatibility of the three terms arose from the opposition between liberty and equality as individualistic values, and fraternity as the realization of a happy community, devoid of any conflicts and opposed to any form of egotism. This fusional interpretation of Fraternity opposed it to the project of individual autonomy and manifested the precedence of Fraternity on individual will.
In this sense, it was sometimes associated with death, as in Fraternité, ou la Mort! ("Fraternity or Death!"), excluding liberty and even equality, by establishing a strong dichotomy between those who were brothers and those who were not, in the sense of "you are with me or against me", brother or foe. Louis Antoine de Saint-Just thus stigmatized the cosmopolitanism of Anacharsis Cloots, declaring "Cloots liked the universe, except France."
With the Thermidorian Reaction and the fall of Robespierre, fraternité disappeared from the slogan, reduced to the two terms of liberty and equality, re-defined again as simple judicial equality and not as the equality upheld by the sentiment of fraternity. In 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte (the First Consul) established the motto liberté, ordre public ("Liberty, Public Order").
19th century Following Napoleon's rule, the triptych dissolved itself, as none believed it possible to conciliate individual liberty and equality of rights with equality of results and fraternity. The idea of individual sovereignty and of natural rights possessed by man before being united in the collectivity, contradicted the possibility of establishing a transparent and fraternal community. Liberals accepted liberty and equality, defining the latter as equality of rights and ignoring fraternity.
Early socialists rejected an independent conception of liberty, opposed to the social, and also despised equality as they considered, as Charles Fourier, that one had only to orchestrate individual discordances, to harmonize them, or they believed, as Henri de Saint-Simon, that equality contradicted equity by a brutal levelling of individualities. Utopian socialism thus only valued fraternity, which was in the Icarians movement of Étienne Cabet the sole commandment.
This opposition between liberals and socialists was mirrored in rival historical interpretations of the Revolution, with liberals admiring 1789, and socialists admiring 1793. The July Revolution of 1830, establishing a constitutional monarchy headed by Louis-Philippe I, substituted ordre et liberté ("Order and Liberty") to the Napoleonic motto Liberté, Ordre public. Despite this apparent disappearance of the triptych, the latter was still being thought in some underground circles, republican secret societies, masonic lodges such as the "Indivisible Trinity", far-left booklets, or during the Canuts Revolt in Lyon. In 1834, the lawyer of the Society of the Rights of Man (Société des droits de l'homme), Jacques-Charles Dupont de l'Eure, a liberal sitting in the far-left during the July Monarchy, associated the three terms together in the Revue Républicaine, which he edited:
In 1847, the triptych resurfaced during the Campagne des Banquets, upheld for example in Lille by Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin. Two interpretations had attempted to conciliate the three terms, beyond the antagonism between liberals and socialists. One was upheld by Catholic traditionalists, such as François-René de Chateaubriand or Pierre-Simon Ballanche, the other by socialist and republican such as Pierre Leroux. Chateaubriand gave a Christian interpretation of the revolutionary motto, stating in the 1841 conclusion to his Mémoires d'outre-tombe:
Neither Chateaubriand nor Ballanche considered the three terms to be antagonistic. Rather, they took them for being the achievement of Christianity. On the other hand, Pierre Leroux did not disguise the difficulties of associating the three terms, but superated it by considering liberty as the aim, equality as the principle and fraternity as the means. Leroux ordered the motto as Liberty, Fraternity, Equality, an order supported by Christian socialists, such as Philippe Buchez. Against this new order of the triptych, Jules Michelet supported the traditional order, maintaining the primordial importance of an original individualistic right. Michelet attempted to conciliate a rational communication with a fraternal communication, "right beyond right", and thus the rival traditions of socialism and liberalism. The republican tradition would strongly inspire itself from Michelet's synchretism.
1848 Revolution