French Revolution
Introduction
The French Revolution was one of the most important events in world history. It started in 1789 and didn't end until Napoleon Bonaparte took power in 1799. During this time, French citizens changed the way politics worked by overthrowing the monarchy and the old feudal system. The people were fed up with the French nobility and the government's economic policies. King Louis XVI died by the guillotine, and his wife, Marie Antoinette, was also executed. Even though it ended in a massacre during the reign of terror, the French Revolution showed the power of the people and helped create modern democracy.
The French Revolution: Causes and Consequences
As the eighteenth century came to an end, France's expensive participation in the American Revolution coupled with King Louis XVI's lavish expenditures brought France to the brink of ruin. Not only did the royal treasury run out of money, but a series of years of bad harvests, droughts, cattle diseases and rising bread prices led to widespread discontent among peasants and the city poor. They began to riot, loot and strike in protest at the heavy taxation imposed by the French government.
In 1786, Charles Alexander de Calonne, Louis XVI's controller general, proposed a new financial reform package. This reform package included the introduction of a universal land tax, from which the nobility was no longer exempt.
Estates General
In order to secure the support of these measures and stave off a rising rebellion among the nobility, the King convened the Estates General, an assembly of France's clergy, nobility, and middle class, for the first time in 1789. The meeting was to take place on May 5th, 1789; meanwhile, delegates from each of the three estates were to draw up lists of grievances to be presented to the King (les couches de droites).
The Rise of the Third Estate
By 1614, the composition of the French population had changed significantly. The Third Estate, composed of non-aristocrats and middle-class individuals, now comprised 98 per cent of the population, although the nobles could still be overruled by the two other bodies. In advance of the meeting on May 5, 1614, the Order began to rally support for equality of representation and the removal of the nobility's veto; in other words, the order proposed a system of voting by the head rather than by status. While all orders were united in their desire for tax and judicial reform and a more representative system of governance, the nobles were particularly resistant to relinquishing the advantages they had enjoyed under the old system.
Tennis Court Oath
When the Estates General met at Versailles on June 17, the highly public discussion over their voting process quickly degenerated into open warfare between the three orders that overshadowed the meeting’s original purpose and the king’s authority as the convener.
The Third Estate met alone for the first time on June 17, with negotiations on procedure bogged down. Three days later, they gathered in an indoor tennis court at Versailles and took the “Tennis Court Oath,” vowing not to leave until constitutional reform was achieved. Within a week, the majority of the clerical representatives and 47 liberal nobles joined them. On June 27, Louis XVI reluctantly incorporated all three orders into a new National Assembly.
The Bastille
Fear and violence gripped the capital on June 12, 1789. The National Assembly (as it was known during its constitutional work) was still in session in Versailles. Despite their enthusiasm for the recent decline of royal authority, Parisians began to panic as news spread that a military coup was imminent. A popular rebellion broke out on July 14th, when rioters attacked the Bastille to obtain gunpowder and arms. Many consider this day, now a national holiday in France, to be the beginning of the French Revolution.
A wave of revolutionary enthusiasm and widespread hysteria swept through the nation. Peasants were rebelling against centuries of exploitation, looting and burning the homes of the wealthy, landlords, and the nobility. This agrarian rebellion, known as la Grande peur, hastened the exodus of the nobility from France and prompted the NCPE to sign what would later be known as the “Death Certificate of the Old Order.”
A declaration of the rights of man and the citizen
At the end of August 1791, the Assembly passed the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, a declaration of democratic principles based on the ideas of the philosophers and political thinkers of the Enlightenment, such as Jean-Luces Rousseau. The declaration declared the Assembly's intention to replace the old regime with a system of equality of opportunity, freedom of expression, popular sovereignty, and representative government.
However, writing a formal constitution proved to be a much more difficult task than the Assembly had anticipated. Its members struggled for months with basic questions about the size and scope of France's new political system. For example, who would be in charge of selecting delegates? Would the church be loyal to the French? government or the Roman Catholic Church? Most importantly, how much power would the king, whose public image had taken a nosedive after his failed escape from the country in June of 1791, still retain?
On the 3rd of September 1791, France's first written Constitution was written in response to the more moderate voices within the Assembly. It established a constitutional monarchy, with the king having a royal veto and the power to appoint ministers.
This compromise didn't sit well with radical leaders such as Maximilien of Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins, who started campaigning to get more people behind a republican system of government and Louis XVI's trial.
The French Revolution Has Turned Radical
The new legislative assembly declared war on Prussia and Austria in April 1792. They believed that French emigres were forming anti-revolutionary alliances, and they hoped to spread their revolutionary ideas throughout Europe through war. At home, the crisis deepened when the Jacobins, an ultra-leftist group, stormed the royal house in Paris in August 1792. The following month, hundreds of counterrevolutionaries were slaughtered by Parisian rioters, leading to the resignation of the legislative assembly and the formation of the National Convention.
In January 1793, King Louis XVI was put to death by guillotine for the crimes he had committed against the state. His wife, Marie-Anne, was put to death nine months later.
The reign of terror
After the King's execution, the war with Europe and the turmoil within the National Convention led to the most violent and chaotic period of the French Revolution. The Jacobins took over the National Convention in June 1793 and started to do some pretty wild stuff, like introducing a new calendar and getting rid of Christianity. They also started the so-called 'Bloody Reign of Terror', which was 10 months of guillotining people suspected of being part of the revolution. Robespierre was in charge of the Committee of Public Safety and led the guillotines until he was executed himself on July 28th, 1794.
Thermidorian Reaction
After Robespierre's death, the Thermidorian reaction began a moderate period during which the French people rebelled against the excesses of the Reign of Terror. The National Convention made up of many surviving Girondins, ratified a new Constitution in August 1795, which established France's first two-party legislature and placed executive power in the hands of the five-person Directory (Directoire), which was appointed by parliament. Royalists and Jacobins objected to the new regime but were quickly silenced by the military, now led by the young and successful general, Napoleon Bonaparte.
The end of the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon
During the four years, the Directory was in power, there were lots of financial problems, people's dissatisfaction, inefficiency, and political corruption. In the end, the directors had to rely on the army to keep them in power, and they had to give up a lot of their control to the generals on the battlefield. On November 9th, 1799, when people were really fed up with the directors, Bonaparte did a coup d'etat. He got rid of the Directory and made himself the first consul of France. This ended the French Revolution, and it was the start of Napoleon's Napoleonic War, which would see France take over most of continental Europe.
