The French Revolution
What was happening on the ground?
• Economic Troubles
– Wars: France has been battling with England off and on for years and now
they were locked in expensive build up patterns
– Versailles was really freaking expensive and the monarchs were wealthy and
liked to show it off
• Not necessarily because they wanted to rub it in the face of the people but because
of competition between nations at the time
– Debt – clergy and nobility (1st and 2nd estates) did not pay taxes so the
majority of the taxes came from the commoners
• Political Crisis
– Louis XVI recognized the tax burden and actually tried to tax the nobility
– Called the Estates General (1789) which hadn’t been called since 1614
• Louis XIV wanted the people to write out a list of grievances
– With this list, it becomes obvious that if something is not done soon, there will be a revolution
– There had been some serious draughts and crop deaths in the countryside
which had caused the price of bread to spike naturally and then you add in
needing to feed soldiers that were necessary for war, that’s a lot of bread
and prices rose even more
• People were starving and bread was a staple in the French diet
• Families would eat 3 or 4 four-pound loaves a day
• Enlightenment Ideas
– The state is the state and the king is the king
• This is different than what it was before because these two
were synonymous, when Louis XIV said “I am the state” he
literally meant that he made up the state and what he said
goes
– With the Enlightenment, there is a separation between the state
and the king, the people began to be the state, while the king is just
the king
• Louis even tries toward the end of his reign to
dress like a citizen king
– He’s trying to get the sympathy and support of the
people
Can you hear the people sing? Les Miserables
Building the Barricades:
http://www.anyclip.com/movies/les-miserables-3/building-the-barricade/
The Dawn of the Revolution
• Estates-General
– 1789 Louis XVI calls the Estates-General
• This was the legislative body of France but it existed at the
whim of the king, so if the king did not want them to meet,
they did not meet
• Initially, the Third Estate wanted to double the size of the
Third Estate (since they were such a big percentage of the
population)
– Then wanted to vote by number instead of the medieval way which
was each estate received one total vote
– Louis said no to this
• Then the Third Estate said they wanted all the estates to
meet together (traditionally, the First and Second would
meet and vote and then the Third would do the same)
– King said yes to this but they were still outnumbered
• The National Assembly
– The Third Estate wanted to make changes to the French nation but
without the proper voting power, they were stuck
– Then Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyes, a sympathetic clergyman gave the Third
Estate a new idea
• He said that since the Third Estate was actually made up of the people, they
were the ones who should be running the country and so they should rename
themselves the National Assembly
• The National Assembly would then have the power to pass laws and reforms
without the approval of the Estates-General
– This proposal passed quickly and the newly named National Assembly
proclaimed the end of absolute monarchy and the beginning of
representative government
– Three days later, they went to meet at the Estates-General to make this
pronouncement but when they got there, they found the doors locked
so they did what any good revolutionaries would do and broke down a
door
• This door led to an indoor tennis court and this is where they took the
– Tennis Court Oath – saying they would stay in this court until they had drawn up a new
Constitution
– Noblemen and clergy members who favored this change, soon flocked to the court to
show their support
• In response, Louis stationed a mercenary army of Swiss guard in
front of Versailles
• Storming of the Bastille (14 July 1789)
– As all this was happening, rumors flew around Paris
• The most well-known ones:
– Louis was bringing in mercenary armies to put down the National Assembly and
restore order
– Foreign troops were massing at the borders, ready to massacre French citizens
– The First and Second estates were preparing to attack
– They were all very violent rumors, and what happens when people are afraid of
violence, they prepare for it
– People wanted to defend themselves and so they looked for the
best place with weapons…that was the Bastille prison
• Georges Danton, was one of the most famous organizers of the attack
• On 14 July 1789, a mob in Paris stormed the prison looking for
gunpowder and weapons…oh and to free some prisoners (of which there
were only 7, although Voltaire was one of them)
• They overwhelmed the guards and took control of the building
– They hacked the warden and several guards to death before parading their heads
around the streets on pikes
– This act scared the crap out of the National Assembly who had
no idea this was meant to happen
• Reforms of 1789
– Abolition of feudalism
• The Great Fear
– Feudalism is abolished by the news of Paris got there
before the feudalism reforms
– Peasants in the countryside finally get news of what is
going on in Paris and they start to riot too
– This is driven on by the rumor that the nobles were trying
to hire outlaws to terrorize and murder the peasants
– They armed themselves with pitchforks and then started
to attack the homes of nobles in the countryside
• Specifically they burned legal papers that bound them to pay
feudal dues
• In other cases, they just burned down the homes
• Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen
– Defines liberty as the right to do anything that
does not hurt other
– Acts as a declaration of promise
• Woman’s Riot October 1789
– In this time the prices of grain and bread had spiked
again and the women wanted to tell the king and
queen what they thought about the situation
– Marched on Versailles
– Forced the King and Queen to move from Versailles
to Paris
• With the help of the National Guard the women capture
the king and queen and bring them to Paris
• The Assembly Rebuilds France
– Civil Constitution of the Clergy
• Since the people were controlling the state, they should
also control the church
• Made clergy swear allegiance to state and monarch, so
they were state employees and their salary came from the
state
– Creation of Departments
• Allowed for governance equally, so will have elected
councils
– Louis attempts to flee
• Left a note condemning the revolution before running
from Paris to Belgium
• Was caught in Varennes – someone recognized his face
from the coinage he had put out when he was crowned
• Local national guard is called in to take him back to Paris
• The National Assembly starts to divide
– Legislative Assembly split into three groups:
• Jacobins - Radicals (sat in the left of the hall)
• Girondin - Moderates (sat in the center)
• Royalists – Conservatives (sat on the right of the hall)
• Also start to see patriotism for the first time
– This was never seen before, at least not to the same
extent that you see it at this time
• With the divisions, you get the dissolve of the
National Assembly and a Convention is formed
to run the country and go to war
• Execution and war
– France at war
• Monarchs from near France were worried that the ideas
might spread to their own countries so they start to march
on Paris with a threat of violence if the king should be
harmed
– Jacobins take control
• Most of the changes that happened in September 1792 were
done by Jacobins
• They tried Louis XVI for treason to the people of Paris
• 21 January 1793 he was executed by Guillotine for treason
– A few months later, the man who called for Louis’s
execution, Jean-Pierre Marat, leader of the Jacobins
was found stabbed to death in his bathtub
• A woman named Charlotte Corday confessed to the crime
• She too was guillotined
• War keeps going
– Austria and Prussia are now really upset because
France just killed their king
– While France had been holding their own initially, the
execution of the king brought Great Britain, Holland,
and Spain in on the side of Austria and Prussia
• France started to suffer massive defeats
• In order to fix this, the Jacobins instituted a draft of 300,000
French citizens between the ages 18-40
• By 1794, so less than a year later, the army was 800,000
strong and included women
The Committee of Public Safety
• What was the committee
– Chief task was to protect the Revolution from its
enemies
• Danton’s role in it
• The switch to Robespierre
• Constitution of 1793 – universal manhood
suffrage, all men could vote, including poor
men
The Great Terror
• Robespierre assumes control
– Believers in reason:
• Changed the calendar
• Closed all churches in Paris (cities and towns across France
did the same later)
• Wanted to build a “Republic of Virtue” and de-Christianize
France
– Law of the Maximum – controlled price of grain and
eventually bread; stabilized grain prices so everyone
could eat
– Abolition of slavery
– Reform of the Calendar
• His reign becomes known as the “Reign of
Terror”
– This took the protection of the revolution to the
extreme
• They would be trying people in the morning and then
executing them in the afternoon
• Many of these enemies were opposition to Robespierre
(including Danton)
• Thousands of unknown people were killed in the
terror
– One woman was killed because she had cut down a
tree that had been planted to symbolize liberty
– As many as 40,000 people were executed during the
terror
• About 85% were members of the urban poor or middle class
– the people for who the revolution was supposedly
launched for
• July 1794 members of the National Convention
turned on Robespierre, demanding his arrest and
execution
– 28 July 1794 – Robespierre met that fate after being
shot in the jaw during his arrest
The Thermidorian Reaction
• They have to figure out how to calm everything
down
– Convention is still in power
– Jacobins in the cities, Royalists in the countryside
• Girondins were in on both sides
– Republic of the Wealthy
• Only become 30,000 electors in a country of 30,000,000
– “Monsieur” replaced “citayen” which was used in the
radical phase
The Third Republic
• People were tired with the death of Robespierre
and so moderate leaders in the National
Convention drafted a new piece of legislature, it
would become the Third Republic
– Placed power firmly in the hands of the upper middle
class and called for a two-house legislature and an
executive body of five men, known as the Directory
(taken straight from the Romans)
• Not to be radical idealists
– Queue Napoleon Bonaparte
Legacy of the French Revolution
• Notion of universal manhood suffrage (not even
in America yet)
• Religious liberty – for both Protestants and Jews
• Abolition of slavery
• Republicanism – only major state with a republic
in the late 1800s
• Notion of economic equality
• Terror – use of fear tactics to use a political
terror; violence can be useful in politics