AP European History
French Revolution DBQ
Prompt: Discuss and analyze how the ideas and objectives of the men and women who participated in the
French Revolution changed over time.
Historical Background: In 1789 the National Assembly formed during Louis Xiv’s Estates General and spurred to action the aggrieved third estate of Paris, who literally stormed the Bastille and rose in revolution against a king floundering in debt. The Assembly abolished the French nobility, changed the guild system, overhauled political boundaries and established a national church. The revolution rippled outward geographically and socially, extending to the French peasantry and the women of Paris, with both positive and negative results, and inspired multiple conflicts abroad.
Document One
Source: Petition from the Women of the Third Estate, January 1789
We ask to be enlightened, to have work, not in order to usurp men’s authority, but in order to be better esteemed by them, so that we might have the means of living out of the way of misfortune…
We implore you, Sire, to set up free schools where we could learn our language…
We ask to be able to come of the state of ignorance, to be able to give our children a sound and reasonable education so as to make of them subjects worthy of serving you.
Document Two
Source: M. Dufourny de Villeres, French revolutionary pamphlet: “Cahier of the Fourth Order [Estate] of the poor, the infirm, the indigent, etc., the Sacred Order of the Unfortunates:…To make up for the right to directly elect [representative to] the Estates which appertains to all of France, but which this Order does not enjoy,”
April 1789 (Paris)
…Reason dictates that, contrary to the current configuration of the Orders [Estates]…the true Orders should be these: the poor; those who have only the necessitates; the well-off; the rich; the opulent; the bloated.
Now, according to this classification, the poor, far from paying, will have the right to receive assistance; those who have only necessities will neither pay nor receive, because only indigents will receive and because only those with excess pay and those with real needs don’t come close to having excess; if the well-off must pay a twentieth, the rick must pay two and half times [more], the opulent six [times that], the bloated ten [times that]
Document Three
Source: Preamble to the Declaration of the Rights of Man, August 1789.
The representatives of the French people, organized as a National Assembly, believing that the ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole causes of public calamities and of the corruption of governments, have determined to set forth in a solemn declaration of the natural, inalienable, and sacred

rights man,…in order that the grievances of the citizens, based hereafter upon simple and incontestable principles, shall tend to the maintenance of the constitution and redound to the happiness of all.
Document Four
Source: Olympe de Gouges, “Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen,” September 1791
Mothers, daughters, sisters and representatives of the nation demand to be constituted into a national assembly. Believing that ignorance, omission, or scorn for the rights of woman are the only causes of public misfortunes and of the corruption of governments, [the women] have resolved to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights of women…in order that citizens’ demands, henceforth based on simple and incontestable principles, will always support the constitution, good morals, and the happiness of all.
Document Five
Source: National Convention, Presiding Session of 9 Brumaire, November 1793
Several…self-proclaimed Revolutionary Women may have been led astray by an excess of patriotism, but others, doubtless, were motivated only by malevolence…
The section of Marches…requests…that popular societies of women by strictly prohibited, at least during the revolution…
To govern is to rule the commonwealth by laws, the preparation of which demand extensive knowledge, unlimited attention and devotion, a strict immovability, and self-abnegation…Are women capable of these care and of ht equalities they call for? In general, we answer no…
We believe, therefore, that a woman should not leave her family to meddle in affairs of the government…
It is not possible for women to exercise political rights.
Document Six
Source: Pierre Antoine Leseur, The Planting of a Liberty Tree, 1792

Document Seven
Source: Proclamation of the National Convention to the French People following the execution of King Louis
XVI, January 1793.
Now, above all, we need peace in the interior of the French Republic, and the most active surveillance of the domestic enemies of liberty. Never did circumstances more urgently require of all citizens the sacrifice of their passions and their personal opinions concerning the act of national justice which has just been effected.
Today the French people can have no their passion than that for liberty.
Document Eight
Source: Speech by Robespierre, February 1794
The French are the first people in the world who have established true democracy by calling all men to equality and to full enjoyment of the rights of citizenship…Since virtue [good citizenship] and equality are the soul of the republic…it follows that the rule of your political conduct must be to relate all of your measures to the maintenance of equality and to the development of virtue…That which is immoral is impolitic, and that which tends to corrupt is counterrevolutionary. Weakness, vices and prejudices are the road to monarchy…It is necessary to annihilate both the internal and external enemies of the republic or it will perish.
Document Nine
Source: Durand de Maillane, Description of the execution of Robespierre, July 1794
Robespierre’s turn had come at last…He dictated decrees and directed the administration. Nothing was done except by his orders or with his approval. His caprices were flattered, and his very manias were praised…His power seemed too terrible to his accomplices as it did to his victims. A number had been sacrificed already and others feared the same fate. They banded together to pull down the idol they themselves had set up.
Document Ten
Source: Anonymous print, “It is dreadful, but necessary” 1794

Document Eleven
Source: Report to the government on public opinion 1794
The revolutionary committees are everyday falling into discredit. You hear daily that they consist daily that they contain a number of intriguers who plunder the nation and oppress the citizens. It is a fact that there is no section of Paris which is not satisfied with its revolutionary committee or does not seriously desire to have them abolished.