Revolution
Stage 1
Liberal Stage - Bourgeois Phase
1789 - 1792
• Enlightenment
ideas
Long term causes
• Privileges and resentment among social
classes:
• nobles of the robe v. noble of the sword
• bourgeoisie v. nobles
• peasants resent seigneurial rights and dues
• Financial crisis due to wars
• Social tensions due to high prices, low wages,
high unemployment and bad harvests for
several years.
• Ineffective and weak king
The French
Monarchy
1775 - 1793
Louis XVI
Bourbon Dynasty
Marie Antoinette
Habsburg Dynasty
The Royal
Family
“let them eat cake”
“Madame deficit”
“The Austrian Whore”
Marie Antoinette’s
Peasant Cottage
Burden of taxation falls on the peasantry.
Burdens of the French Urban Poor
Estates General
meets first time since
1614
Problem #1 - How to vote.
300
300
Vote by head or
Estate?
1st Estate = clergy
2%
2%
648 96%
lawyers
2nd Estate = nobles
3rd Estate = Everyone else
Abbe Emmanuel Sieyes
cahiers de doleances or list of grievances
critical of:
• absolutism
• seigneuralism
• tax system
• lettres de cachet
wanted:
• a new national assembly
The Third Estate proclaims itself
the
National Assembly of France,
next. . .
• Glorifies heroes
Time out for art. .
• Revival of Classical Style
.
• Greco-Roman influence Neoclassicism
• Order, Intellectual
• Very realistic looking;
The Death of
Socrates (1787)
Jacques-Louis
David
On the eve of the Revolution, this
picture served as a trumpet call to
duty, and resistance to unjust
authority.
Storming the Bastille
July 14, 1789
“Is it a revolt?” No, Sire, it is a Revolution.”
The Great Fear: Peasant
Revolt
July 19 - August 3
August 4th Decrees
Death of the Old Regime
• nobles stand and renounce their privileges
• feudal dues are abolished
• freedom of worship
• abolition of sale of offices
• abolition of exclusive right of hunting for
nobles
The WHITE of the
Bourbons + the RED &
BLUE of Paris.
Women’s March
October 1789
The National Assembly
also. . .
• Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen
• Civil Constitution of the French Clergy
• juring vs. non-juring priests or refractory
priests (those refusing to swear an oath of
loyalty to the Revolution)
• Constitution of 1791
• sets up a constitutional monarchy
The
National
Assembly
• Granted
citizenship
and civil rightsalso.
to
Protestants and Jews
..
• Ended the monopoly of the guilds
• passed the Le Chapelier law prohibiting workmen from joining
together to refuse to work.
• established civil marriages, divorce,
inheritances to be divided equally
among children
• abolished slavery in France but not in
the colonies (will lead to slave revolt in
Haiti)
Depreciation of the
Assignat
Whoever acquired them were
entitled to certain privileges in
the purchase of church land.
The state would retire the notes as
the land was sold.
They began circulating as paper
currency.
Government printed more INFLATION
[they lost 99% of their value
ultimately].
Therefore, future governments paid off
their creditors with cheap money.
New Relations Between Church & State
Government paid the salaries of the French clergy and maintained the churches.
The church was reorganized:
Parish priests elected by the district assemblies.
Bishops named by the
department assemblies.
The pope had NO
voice in the
appointment of
the French clergy.
It transformed France’s
Roman Catholic Church
into a branch of the state!!
Meanwhile. . .
Jean Paul Marat
Attacked the king in his newspaper.
Used popular sovereignty rhetoric of
Rousseau
Sir Edmund Burke (1790):
Reflections on the Revolution in France
Father of modern conservatism
attacks the French Revolution
change should come through
gradual evolution not
revolution
Olympe de Gouges
(1745-1793)
Women played a vital role in the
Revolution.
But, The Declaration of the Rights
of Man did NOT extend the
rights and protections of
citizenship to women.
The First Coalition &
The Brunswick Manifesto
(August 3, 1792)
Revolutionary
government will declare
The First Coalition:
Austria
Prussia
France vs.
Britain
Spain