The French Revolution,1789-1799
• LIBERTY – EQUALITY- FRATERNITY
Causes of the French Revolution
• The Enlightenment
• Ideas:
• Liberty
• Equality
• Reason
• Progress
• Philosophes:
• Locke defended private property, limited sovereignty and fair
government
• Voltaire attacked noble privileges and the Church’s authority
Causes (continued)
The American Revolution,
• 1775-1783:
showed the ideas of Enlightenment in
action
French soldiers (i.e. Lafayette) who helped
came home inspired
Put Louis XVI in deep debt
French Economy was failing
• Enormous National debt (4 Billion)
• 50 percent of government’s income went
to interest on debt
• No central bank or paper currency
• Inefficient and uneven taxation system
(varied by region and estate)
Feudal system
• Estate System outdated
• Posed many difficulties to rising middle class of
Third Estate
• Difficult to move upward in society, unless
very rich
• Less well-off commoners resented the inequality
of the three estates
Louis XVI
• Good intentions
• ‘Enlightened’
• Weak-willed
• Indecisive
• Marie-Antoinette allowed “to dispense
patronage amongst friends”
Peasants’ situation unbearable
• ‘Web of obligations’
• Obviously unfairly overtaxed
• Noble hunting privileges
• Land-starved
• Subsistence farmers
Harvest failures in 1787-1788:
• Less food
• Higher prices
• Businesses failed
• Unemployment in cities
Periods of the French Revolution
• Moderate stage: 1789–1792
• Radical stage: 1792–1794
• The Directory: 1794–1799
• Napoleon: 1799–1815
Outbreak of the Revolution
• THE SPARK: Fiscal crisis forced Louis
XVI to call the Estates-General,
summer, 1788 (first time since 1614)
The three estates elected
delegates:
• First Estate represented about 100,000
clergymen
• Second Estate represented about 400,000
noble men and women
• Third Estate represented about 24.5 million
people
Who were the Third Estate
delegates?
• Represented the outlook of the elite
• 25 percent lawyers
• 43 percent government officials
• Strong sense of common grievance and
common purpose (cahiers de doleances)
Outbreak (contd.)
• May 5, 1789: Estates General convened at
Versailles
• June 17, 1789: the delegates of the Third
Estate declared themselves to be the
National Assembly
the Oath of the Tennis Court
(June 20, 1789)
Outbreak (Contd.)
• Public attention to the events in Paris was high
Price of bread soared
• Rumors circulated that Louis was about to
stage a coup d’état
Parisian workers (sans-culottes) organized a
militia of volunteers
July 14, 1789: the Storming of the
Bastille
• Bastille was symbol of royal authority
• Its fall symbolized of the people’s role in
revolutionary change
The Great Fear
• Rumors that the king’s armies were on their
way
• Peasants attacked and burned manor houses
• Destroyed manor records
Response
• August 4, 1789: National Assembly voted to
abolish all noble and other privileges
• Church tithe
• the corvée
• hunting privileges
• tax exemptions and monopolies
• Obliterated the remnants of feudalism
Declaration of the Rights of Man
andCitizen – August 26, 1789
Declared natural rights
Private property
Liberty, security, and
resistance to oppression
Declared freedom of speech,
religious toleration, and
liberty of the press to be
inviolable
Equality before the law
Women’s March on Versailles
Women’s March – con’t…
• Brought on by economic crisis
• Parisian women marched to Versailles
(October 5) and demanded to be heard
• Women demanded Louis and his family
return to Paris
• Women with the help of the National Guard
forced Louis (and the National Assembly) to
move to Paris
Women and the revolution
• General participation in the Revolution
• Took leading roles in mass actions
• Joined clubs, demonstrations, and debates
Women as citizens
• Olympe de Gouges, Declaration of the Rights of Women
and the Citizen (1791)
• Women should have the same rights as men
Religion and the Revolution
• National Assembly confiscated church property
(November 1789)
• The Civil Constitution of the Clergy (July 1790)
• Bishops and clergy subject to the laws of the state
• Salaries to be paid from public treasury
• Church reforms polarized France
• Many resented the privileged position of the church
• Parish church an institution of great local importance