How was French society unequal?
Q
A
Under the Old Regime, the French were divided into three classes, or estates. The First
Estate consisted of the Roman Catholic clergy. The Second Estate was made up of nobles. Those two estates were only 2% of the population. The Third Estate was everyone else: the bourgeoisie
(well-off merchants and skilled workers), city workers (cooks, servants who were poorly paid and often unemployed) and peasants (farm workers making up more than 80% of the population). The Third Estate paid up to half their income in taxes while the rich paid virtually nothing.
Why was France ready for revolution?
Three reasons: 1) The Enlightenment spread the idea that everyone should be equal. 2)
The French economy was failing with high taxes, low profits, massive war debts and food supply shortages. 3) King Louis XVI was a weak leader and his wife, Marie Antoinette, didn’t help: She was from Austria, France’s longtime enemy, and was noted for extravagant spending.
How did the Revolution begin?
When Louis tried to tax the nobles, they forced him to call a meeting (for the first time in
175 years) of the Estates-General, an assembly of delegates of the three estates. The meeting on
May 5, 1789, started with an argument over how to count votes. Instead of one vote for each estate, the Third Estate now demanded that each delegate have a vote. They broke with the others and met separately. In June they voted to rename themselves the National Assembly – claiming to represent all the people (the beginning of representative government in France). When they were locked out of their meeting, they broke down a door leading to a tennis court, promising to stay until they made a new constitution. This promise was called the Tennis Court Oath. Louis tried to make peace, ordering the clergy and nobles to join the National Assembly, but by this time rumors were flying: foreign soldiers were about to attack French citizens. On July 14 (ever since known as Bastille Day) an angry mob captured the Bastille, a Paris prison. They wanted gunpowder for their weapons in order to defend the city.
What was the Great Fear?
It was a wave of paranoia and violence that swept the country. Peasants broke into and burned nobles’ houses, and tore up documents that had forced them to pay fees to the nobles. In
October 1789 a mob of women marched from Paris to the palace at Versailles. They were angry about high bread prices and demanded the king come to Paris to do something about hunger in the city. Louis and Marie Antoinette left the palace, signaling the change of power and radical reforms about to take place.

What reforms resulted from the revolution?
The National Assembly made a revolutionary statement called the Declaration of the
Rights of Man, reflecting the influence of the Declaration of Independence. It guaranteed equal justice, freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Early reforms, for mainly economic reasons
(paying off France’s huge debt), focused on the Church: The assembly seized its land and declared that priests and other Church officials would be elected and paid by the state. This angered millions of peasants, who were devout Catholics, and turned them against further reforms. While the National Assembly worked on plans for the new government, Louis grew increasingly fearful about his fate. He and the royal family tried to escape to the Austrian
Netherlands in 1791, but they were apprehended and returned to Paris. This episode increased the influence of his radical enemies. In the fall of 1791, the assembly completed the new constitution featuring a limited constitutional monarchy, which stripped Louis of much of his power. It also created a new legislative body – the Legislative Assembly.
What groups called for different kinds of changes?
The Legislative assembly quickly divided into groups. Radicals wanted big changes in the way government was run. Moderates wanted some changes, but not as many as the radicals.
Conservatives, liking the idea of limited monarchy, wanted few changes. Outside the Legislative
Assembly, a group called the émigrés – nobles and others who had fled France during the uprisings – wanted to end the revolutionary changes. Another group called the sans-culottes – shopkeepers and wage-earners – wanted greater changes and a greater voice in government.
What caused the French people to take extreme measures?
Kings in other countries feared that revolution would spread to their lands, and some wanted to use force to restore control of France to Louis XVI. When Prussian soldiers were marching toward Paris in 1792, angry French citizens imprisoned the royal family, fearing Louis was ready to help the enemy. More than 1,000 supporters of the king were massacred in other mob actions. To meet the danger from foreign troops, the government took away all the king’s powers. A new government – the National Convention – was formed. Leading this new government were Jacobins, members of a radical political club, who declared Louis a common citizen. He was tried for treason, convicted – and beheaded by a machine called the guillotine.
With ongoing war against Austria and Prussia (soon to be joined by Great Britain, Holland and
Spain), Jacobin leaders in the Convention ordered the draft of hundreds of thousands into the army.
What was the Reign of Terror?
In early 1793, the Jacobin leader Maximilien Robespierre became the leader of France.
He headed the Committee of Public Safety and tried to put to death “enemies of the Revolution.”
Robespierre’s rule, which ended in July 1794, was known as the Reign of Terror. Perhaps as many as 40,000 people were put to death – about 85% of whom were poor or middle class, for whose benefit the French Revolution had been launched. The Terror ended with Robespierre’s own execution.
How did Napoleon rise to power?
In 1795, Napoleon led soldiers against French royalists who were attacking the National
Convention. For this, he was thought of as the savior of the French republic. By 1799, the

unsettled French government had lost the people’s support. In a bold move, Napoleon used troops to seize control of the government, which is called a coup d’etat
. He then assumed dictatorial power.
How did Napoleon use the Revolution’s ideas in his government?
1) He made tax collection more fair and orderly. 2) He removed dishonest government workers. 3) He started lycees – new public schools for ordinary citizens.
4) He gave the church back some of its power by signing a concordat with the pope. 5) He wrote a new set of laws called the Napoleonic Code, which gave all French citizens the same rights.
But the laws took away many rights won during the Revolution. For example, free speech was limited and slavery was restored in French colonies.
What goals did Napoleon have beyond France’s borders?
He wanted to expand his empire in both Europe and the New World, but when he sent soldiers to retake the island of present-day Haiti (slaves had seized power during a civil war), the troops failed. He then gave up on his New World plans and sold the largest part of France’s
North American land – the huge Louisiana Territory – to the United States in 1803. In 1804,
Napoleon declared himself emperor of France and took control of the Austrian Netherlands, parts of Italy, and Switzerland. His only loss during this time was to the British navy in the Battle of
Trafalgar, which prevented him from conquering Britain.
What mistakes did Napoleon make abroad?
Napoleon’s love of power and efforts to extend French rule led to his empire’s collapse.
He made three big mistakes:
1) In trying to weaken the British economy, he ordered a blockade to stop all trade between Europe and other European nations. This policy was called the Continental System because it was supposed to make continental Europe more self-sufficient. But the blockade wasn’t effective enough, and the British – with its superior navy – retaliated with its own blockade that weakened the economies of France and other European countries.
2) Napoleon made his brother, Joseph, king of Spain in 1808, which infuriated the
Spanish people who were loyal to their king. Peasant fighters called guerrillas, with help from the British, fought Napoleon for five years (and killed 300,000 French troops) in what was called the Peninsular War.
3) His worst mistake was attacking Russia in 1812 with more than 420,000 troops. The
Russians followed a scorched-earth policy whereby they burned fields and killed livestock as they retreated so Napoleon’s troops couldn’t eat what they left behind. The French got as far as
Moscow, but the harsh Russian winter forced them to head back. Cold, hunger and Russian counterattacks almost completely wiped out the French army.
What other defeats did Napoleon suffer?
Britain, Russia, Prussia, Sweden and Austria joined forces and attacked the now weakened France, and Napoleon was defeated in 1813 at the Battle of Leipzig, in Germany.
Early the next year, Napoleon gave up his throne and was exiled to the tiny island of Elba off the
Italian coast. But when Louis XVIII assumed the throne and quickly became unpopular,
Napoleon escaped from Elba in 1815 and within days was once again emperor of France. The
European allies raised armies to fight him, and led by the Duke of Wellington, they defeated

Napoleon once and for all at the Battle of Waterloo. This last attempt at power (the escape from
Elba to the defeat at Waterloo) was called the Hundred Days. Napoleon died in 1821, having been sent to the far-off island of St. Helena in the southern Atlantic Ocean.
What was the Congress of Vienna?
It was a series of meetings in Vienna in 1814, where leaders of many nations drew up a peace plan for Europe. The most influential person there was Prince Klemens von Metternich, the foreign minister of Austria. He had three goals: 1) Make sure France wouldn’t attack another country again. 2) Attain a balance of power in which no one nation was strong enough to threaten other nations. 3) Affirm legitimacy – or restore monarchs to the thrones they had before
Napoleon’s conquests. The Congress of Vienna stabilized political relations in Europe and created a time of peace that lasted for nearly 40 years.
How did European leaders respond to the effects of the French Revolution?
The monarchs were uneasy about the legacy of the Revolution. They didn’t want a similar revolution in their own country. They didn’t encourage individual liberties and calls for equal rights. Alliances were formed so that nations would help one another if revolution came.
But many people still believed in the ideas of the French Revolution. In the short term it had failed as Europe’s first experiment in democratic government, but it forever changed the social attitudes and assumptions that had dominated Europe for centuries.