The French Revolution Adopts the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
Men are born and remain free and equal in rights, the National Assembly declares weeks after the fall of the Bastille
Quick facts
- Adopted
- August 26, 1789
- Body
- National Constituent Assembly
- Key phrase
- Men are born and remain free and equal in rights
What happened
France's National Constituent Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen on August 26, 1789, six weeks after the storming of the Bastille. Its first article declared that men are born and remain free and equal in rights, and that social distinctions may be founded only on common usefulness. The document listed liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression as natural and imprescriptible rights, and grounded political authority in the nation as a whole rather than in the king, drawing directly on Locke's and Rousseau's arguments that legitimate government exists to protect pre-existing rights and rests on the people's consent.
Why it matters
The Declaration converted decades of Enlightenment political philosophy into the founding constitutional statement of revolutionary France, and its universal language of the rights of man, rather than the traditional rights of a specific estate or corporation, gave later rights movements across Europe and its colonies a text to invoke directly.
How we know
The Declaration's text survives from the National Assembly's own records; the Avalon Project at Yale Law School and the World History Encyclopedia both preserve and document its August 1789 adoption and content.
Sources
- The Avalon Project, Yale Law School. Declaration of the Rights of Man - 1789 · Primary source (author-declared)avalon.law.yale.edu · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Related timelines
- The French Revolution → · The Revolution that turned these ideas into a founding constitutional statement