THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
1789-1799
“THE FRENCH REVOLUTION RANKS
WITH THE REFORMATION AS ONE OF
THE TWO GREAT WATERSHEDS IN
THE HISTORY OF THE EUROPEAN
WORLD. INTO IT VIRTUALLY ALL
THE PAST FLOWED; FROM IT
VIRTUALLY ALL THE PRESENT HAS
COME.”
Our goal will be to
interpret this quote
by the end of this
unit!
It was the best of times,
it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom,
it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief,
it was the epoch of incredulity…
-- Charles Dickens
A Tale of Two Cities
Monarchy on the eve of the
Revolution
Marie Antoinette & Louis XVI
Let Them Eat Cake!
Y Marie Antoinette NEVER said that!
Y “Madame Deficit”
Y “The Austrian Whore”
Causes of Revolution
1. Inspired by Enlightenment ideas

Motto: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”
2. Inspired by the success of American Revolution
3. Financial difficulties

Debt & heavy taxation
4. Weak leadership
5. Three Estates

Voting inequity
6. Lattre de cachet
1. Enlightened ideas
 France has been a central point in the
enlightenment.
 Louis XV’s mistress patron of enlightenment
 Reading Revolution
2. American Revolution
 France supported to weaken the British
 Supplied guns and powder = large debt
 Supplied military leadership
 Strengthened ideas of individual liberty and
representative government
3. Finances
 Debt, debt, and more debt
 Borrowed money from other nations
 Series of wars
 Lack of a central bank
 Refused to declare partial bankruptcy
 Louis XVI tried to institute own taxes –
declared void
 Called for a session of the Estates General
4. Weak Leader
That says it all…
 Louis XV disliked by people
 Court filled with scandal
 Weakened idea of divine right
 Louis XVI
 “What I should like most is to be loved”
 Dismissed any strong government officials he had
5. 1789:ancien regime= Old Regime
 3 Large social classes
(estates)
 1st Estate: Clergy
 2nd Estate: Nobility
 Paid no taxes
 3rd Estate: Commoners
 98% of population
 Heavily taxed
 Discontented & Angry
The Suggested Voting Pattern:
Voting by Estates
1
1
Clergy
1st Estate
Aristocracy
2nd Estate
1
Commoners
3rd Estate
Louis XVI insisted that the ancient distinction of the three orders be
conserved in its entirety.
The Number of Representatives
in the Estates General: Vote by Head!
300
Clergy
1st Estate
Aristocracy
2nd Estate
300
648
Commoners
3rd Estate
That means 1200 ppl have a say!
Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes
1st What is the Third Estate?
(Qu'est-ce que le tiers état?)
Everything!
2nd What has it been heretofore
in the political order?
Nothing!
3rd What does it demand?
To become something
therein!
Abbé Sieyès
1748-1836
6. Lettres de Cachet
Y The French king could warrant
imprisonment or death in a
signed letter under his seal.
Y A carte-blanche warrant.
Y Cardinal Fleury issued 80,000
during the reign of Louis XV!
Y Eliminated in 1790.
3 Stages of French Revolution
 1st Stage: 1789-17: Absolute Monarchy 
Constitutional Monarchy
 Meeting of Estates General (parliament)
 May 5, 1789
1st time called
into session
since 1614
 Oath of the Tennis Court
 June 20, 1789
Jacques Louis David
 Storming of Bastille
 July 14, 1789
 Rumor that the king was planning a military
coup against the National Assembly
 1st act of violence
 July 14 = French day
of Independence
18 died
73 wounded
7 guards killed
It held 7 prisoners ( 5
ordinary criminals &
2 madmen)
Liberté!
Egalité!
Fraternité!
August Decrees
August 4-11, 1789
(A renunciation of aristocratic privileges!)
The Tricolor (1789)
•The WHITE of the
Bourbons + the RED &
BLUE of Paris.
•1st used in 1789
•Officially adopted
February 15, 1794
Citizen!
The “Liberty Cap”: Bonne Rouge
Revolutionary Symbols
Cockade
Liberté
La Republic
Revolutionary
Clock
 Declaration of the Rights of Man
 August 26, 1789
 Liberty, Property, Resistance to oppression!
 Thomas Jefferson was in Paris at this time.
V
Women played a vital role in
the Revolution.
V
But, The Declaration of the
Rights of Man did NOT
extend the rights and
protections of citizenship to
women.
V
“Declaration of the Rights of
Women” by de Gouges
Olympe de Gouges
 Women’s March
 October 5, 1789
 A spontaneous demonstration of
Parisian women for bread.
“We want the
baker, the baker’s
wife, and the
baker’s boy!”
 Constitutional/Limited monarchy is
established in 1790
 La Maresillaise
 French National Anthem
Composed by
Claude-Joseph
Rouget de Lisle on
April 24, 1792
This was adopted
July 14, 1795.
Banned by
Napoleon
because of its
revolutionary
ideals.
Reinstated in
1879.
National Convention
 1st act was the formal abolition of the monarchy
on this date
 Decree of Fraternity:
 Offered French assistance to any subject peoples who
wished to overthrow their governments.
“When France sneezes, all of Europe catches
cold!”
Constitution
 Ruled on women’s rights
 National Assembly created
 Monopolies, guilds, and worker’s associations
prohibited
 Trade barriers abolished
 Reorganized religion
 Religious freedom to Jews & protestants
 Catholic land confiscated and monasteries closed
Robespierre
“the Revolution is over”
Not quite…
 Louis XVI & the royal family attempts to flee
France - June 1791
 Seen as his lack of support for the new
constitution
 Austria and Prussia pledge to defend
monarch
Flight to
Varennes
Stages of French Revolution
 2nd Stage: 1792-1795: Republic  Anarchy
 “Second Revolution”
 Popularly elected National Convention declares
France a Republic
 All documents henceforth will be dated,
“Year One of the French Republic”
 September Massacres
 Louis XVI executed
 January 21, 1793; he was 38 years old.
'I die innocent of
all the crimes laid
to my charge; I
Pardon those
who have
occasioned my
death; and I pray
to God that the
blood you are
going to shed
may never be
visited on
France.'
Republic Divided
 Girondists
 Did not want to kill Louis XIV
 The Mountain – led by Robespierre
 Both moved to end “Tyranny”
 French army defended the nation along the
borders
 Prussia & Austria
 Declared war on Britain, Holland, and Spain
 Peasants revolted against military draft
 Counter-Revolution began
 Catholics, royalists, and foreign agents
Deadlock
 Committee on Public Safety – led by
Robespierre
 Emigries vs. Sans-culottes
 Mountain gained support of poor peasants
 June 2, 1793
 Sans-culottes invaded the National Convention
 Arrested 29 Girondists for treason
 French provinces revolted and armies were
driven back on al fronts
Guillotine
 Dr. Joseph Ignace Guillotin did not invent the execution










machine that bears his name.
A similar device known as the Halifax Gibbet had been in use
in that Yorkshire town since 1286 and continued until 1650
a Scotsman, James Douglas Earl of Morton, built one in
Edinburgh in 1556, which became known as the Maiden and
remained in use until 1710
Guillotine facts:
Total weight was about 1278 pounds
Blade weighed over 88 pounds
Height of side posts was just over 14 feet
Distance the blade dropped was 88 inches
Blade fell at 21 feet a second taking 1/70 of a second to fall
Took 2/100 of a second for the head to be cut off
Power at impact was 888 pound per square inch
 Dr. Joseph Ignace Guillotin
 1738 – 1821
 French physician, president of the Chamber of the
Provinces in 1775, founder of the French Academy of
Medicine, and deputy to the French assembly in 1789..
 Dr. Guillotin (Deputy of Paris) on October the 10th, 1789
proposed to the Constituent Assembly that all condemned
criminals should be beheaded on the grounds of humanity
and egalité (equality)! More humane, efficient means of
decisive death!
 Killed over 15,000 people by the end of the
Revolution
 Basket by guillotine for fallen heads
 Method of execution was seen as being more
humane than earlier forms
 Symbol of cruelty
Guillotine
LAST OF THE EXECUTIONS
 Last public execution was in 1939
 Eugene Weidmann
 convicted for six murders, was guillotined on June
17th 1939,outside the prison Saint Pierre at rue
Georges Clémenceau in Versailles. Conspiracy, --kidnapping, fraud, robbery, murder, resisting
arrest
1939
“Madame Guillotines Last Kiss”
 Hamida Djandoubi—a Tunisian Immigrant was the
last to die at the hands of the Maiden in 1977!!!!!
 He was convicted of the torture & murder of 21
year old Elisabeth Bousquet, his former girlfriend, in
Marseille.
 Though the death penalty was grinding to a halt in
1970’s France, Djandoubi was not the last person
condemned ; the guillotine was only abolished with
the election of the Francois Mitterand government
in 1981!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Marie Antoinette on her way
to her execution!
Execution of Marie
Antoinette
 Was tried, convicted of treason and executed
by guillotine on 16 October 1793, nine months
after her husband. Her last words were,
"Pardon me Sir, I did not mean to do it," to
Sanson the executioner, whose foot she
accidentally stepped on before she was
executed by guillotine.
 She was 37 years old.
Committee of Public Safety
 Created in April 1793 by the National
Convention
 Spoke for the “General Will”
 Unify or Die!
 Established a planned economy (socialism)
 Bread
 Weapons
 Raw materials
 Revolutionary Tribunal
 300, 000 arrested
Committee of Public Safety
1793
 Supervised trials & executions
 The committee was responsible for
thousands of executions, with many highprofile executions at the guillotine, in what
was known as the "Reign of Terror."
The Reign of Terror
Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe,
inflexible. -- Robespierre
Let terror be the order
of the day!
c
The Revolutionary
Tribunal of Paris alone
executed 2,639 victims
in 15 months.
c
The total number of
victims nationwide was
over 20,000!
Reign of Terror
June 1793 – 27 July 1794
 Period of violence
 Mass executions of "enemies of the revolution.”
 Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre
 Guillotine became the killing
Machine.
 Called, “The Incorruptible” because of
his austere moral devotion to
revolutionary political change.
Also…
 Gov’t sponsored revolutionary art and music
 Secular holidays and republican festivals
 Dechristianization
 But…strong sense of nationalism developed
The “Thermidorean Reaction,” 1794
March
• economic controls are relaxed
• Robespierre executes many of his critics
July 26  Robespierre gives a speech illustrating
new plots & conspiracies.
 many felt threatened by his implications.
July 27  the Convention arrests Robespierre.
July 28  Robespierre is tried & guillotined!
Execution of Robespierre
 28-Jul-1794
 “Most revolutions devour their own”
3rd Stage Thermidorian Reaction:
DirectoryDictatorship
1795
 Abolished economic controls
 Used army to suppress sans-culottes’ protest
 National Convention
wrote another constitution
 Elected new assembly
 Chose 5 man executive
Reaction to Directory
 Disgust
 New election 1797 – voided
 Established a dictatorship
18 Brumaire (Nov. 9, 1799)
 Coup d’état by
Napoleon.
 Approved by a
plebiscite in
December.
 Abbe Sieyès:
Confidence
from below;
authority from
above.
Brumaire was the second month in the French Republican Calendar. Brumaire often refers
to the coup d'état of 18 Brumaire in the year VIII (November 9, 1799), by which General
Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the government of the Directory to replace it with the
Consulate.
 Napoleon sets up the Consulate with himself as
First Consul
 1799—The Revolution is coming to an end.
 Napoleon becomes Emperor of France
 1804
Cycle of the
French
Revolution
1799: First
Consulate; back
to one man
rule./Napoleon
1789 : Absolute
Monarchy/Louis
XVI
1795: Directory
So…what
was the
significance
of the French
Revolution?
Started
with
oneman rule
and
ended
with one
man
1791: Limited rule???
Monarchy
1793-94-ReignTerror/Anarchy
1792: Monarchy
Abolished;
Republic
Established
 Napoleon becomes Emperor of France
 1804:
Took place in cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, France on
December 2nd, 1804.
Crowned himself emperor in presence of Pope Pius VII to
send a message that the Church will be excluded from all
political affairs.
 An unmanned balloon, ablaze with three thousands lights in
an imperial crown pattern was launched from the front of
Notre Dame during the celebration.
Crown of Napoleon
Napoleon called his new crown the
Crown of Charlemagne, the name of
the ancient royal coronation crown of
France that had been destroyed in the
French Revolution
Crane Brinton’s Anatomy
of a Revolution
Y He borrowed his terms from
pathology.
Y Compares a revolution to a fever or
a disease:
 The revolutionary “fever” begins
with the appearance of certain
“symptoms.”
 It proceeds by advances and
retreats to a crisis stage, or
“delirium.”
 The crisis ends when the “fever”
breaks.
 A period of convalescence follows,
interrupted by a relapse or two
before the recovery is complete.
Crane Brinton’s Anatomy of a
Revolution
 The Anatomy of Revolution is a book by Crane
Brinton->American historian of France
 outlined uniformities in four revolutions: the English
Revolution of the 1640s, the American, the French,
and the 1917 Russian Revolution
 cycle from the Old Order to a moderate regime to a
radical regime, after which came a Thermidorian
reaction.
Crane Brinton: Conditions Present
Before a Revolution Occurs
1. People from all social classes are discontented.
2. People feel restless and held down by unacceptable
restrictions in society, religion, the economy or the govt.
3. People are hopeful about the future, but they are being
forced to accept less than they had hoped for.
4. People are beginning to think of themselves as
belonging to a social class, and there is a growing
bitterness between social classes.
5. The social classes closest to one another are the most
hostile.
Crane Brinton: Conditions Present
Before a Revolution Occurs
6.
The scholars and thinkers give up on the way their society
operates.
7.
The government does not respond to the needs of its
society.
8.
The leaders of the government and the ruling class begin
to doubt themselves. Some join with the opposition
groups.
9.
The government is unable to get enough support from
any group to save itself.
10. The government cannot organize its finances correctly
and is either going bankrupt or trying to tax heavily and
unjustly.