The French Revolution

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The French Revolution
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The French Revolution Why Did It Happen?
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• Long-run conditions
• An out-moded social system
• An out-moded economic system
• An out-moded political system

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Out-Moded Social System (Three Estates)

• Privilege no longer has a reason for being.
  Example the nobles privilege originally existed
  because they defended their domains.
• Clergy has lost respect
• New urban elite impatient with the system, a
  system into which urban life does not fit.
• Peasants being squeezed

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Out-Moded Economic System

• Unfair taxation
• Privilege impedes progress. Example toll booths,
  awarded as a privilege, slow down distribution of
  goods.
• Seigneurial system (lord and manor) no longer
  works.

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Out-Moded Political System

• Belief in the divine right of kings challenged
  through de-Christianization
• Absolute power of king challenged by nobility
• Municipal power of cities doesnt fit into old
  system
• Justice is fragmented.

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Short-run Conditions

• Famines and bad harvests. 1788-1789 crop
• failures and grain shortages doubled price of
  bread.
• Government crisis (lack of money). Louis XVI,
  who took the throne in 1774, tried to reform
  government by a policy of laissez-faire
  (economic).
• His finance minister floated loans at high
  interest rates.
• He had spent money on backing the American
  revolution and on the Seven Years War.
• Abolishing of Edict of Nantes long before hurt
  commerce. The Protestants who fled France were
  important to the work force.
• Taxes up 27 since he took office

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Pre-Revolutionary events

• Grain riots of 1775
• Aristocratic revolt (1787-1788)
• Bourgeois revolt (1788-1789)

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Grain Riots of 1775

• Aim
• popular control of bread price
• For them?
• The poor and some clergy, officials, nobles
• Against them?
• Richer peasants, merchants, millers, bakers
• The riots failed. Lesson no popular movement, by
  itself, could win
• (Other labor strikes. Example book-binders
  seeking a 14-hour day in 1776.)

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The Three Estates
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Aristocratic Revolt (1787-1788)

• Nobility wanted to squeeze more money from
  peasants
• Nobility wanted more say in central government

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Bourgeois Revolt (1788-1789)

• Bourgeois wanted
• Free trade
• Representation (equal or double)
• Voting (by order or head)
• Popular movement more political, less economic

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Most in Third Estate wanted

• End of fetters on production
• End of high food cost
• End of feudal obligations
• More taxes paid by privileged
• End of tyrannies (lettres de cachet)

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Alliances

• Wage-earners, craftsmen, wine-growers AGAINST
  monopolists, hoarders, speculators
• Little people with peasants against feudal dues
  and with bourgeoisie AGAINST seigneurial
  privilege and absolute monarchy
• Peasants against enclosure and land-clearance

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The King, Louis XVI,wanted to maintain his power
but needed money
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Louis as a pig
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Marie Antoinette, queen, not beloved
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Queen as serpent
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Phases of the French Revolution

• Phase 1 Constitutional Monarchy as Goal
  (1789-1792)
• Phase 2 The Republic (1792-1795)
• Phase 3 The Directory (1795-1799)
• Phase 4 Napoleon (1799-1815)

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The French Revolution Phase IConstitutional
Monarchy as Goal(1789-1792)
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Meeting of the Estates General (May, 1789)
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Tennis Court Oath (David)
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Storming of the Bastille(July 14, 1789)
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(No Transcript)
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Peasants revolt against feudalism(July-August)

• Base for Federation
• Spurred NationalAssembly to surrender feudal
  rights

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Paris Third Estate

• Forms Commune
• Militia of bourgeoisie

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Great Fear

• Rumors nobles
• hoarding grain
• Rumors nobles hiring vagrants to destroy harvest
• Peasants burning castles to remove evidence of
  feudal dues

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August, 1789

• National Assembly declares end to feudal rights
  (August 4-11)
• Declaration of the Rights of Man (August 26)

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Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen
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Womens march to Versailles (October, 1789)
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The king greeting the market women
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Triumphant Return
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(No Transcript)
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State confiscation and sale of Church lands
(November-December, 1789)
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February-July, 1790

• Some religious orders abolished (February)
• Titles and nobility abolished(June)
• Civil Constitution of Clergy (July)

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Festival of the FederationJuly 14, 1790
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October-December, 1790

• King explores his options
• Loyalty oath
• Guilds abolished
• Le Chapelier Law passed

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Flight to Varennes (June, 1791)
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(No Transcript)
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Champ de Mars MassacreJuly 17, 1791
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1791 Constitution

• National Assembly adopts 1791 Constitution
  (September)
• Power in hands of Assembly (taxing, law-making
• Elections every two years by citizens eligible to
  vote
• Now Legislative Assembly

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Accomplishments of Constituent Assembly

• Ended feudal privileges
• Set up constitutional monarchy and unicameral
  legislature
• Provided for franchise of active citizens
• Jews given citizenship

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Legislative Assembly (October, 1791-September,
1792)

• War against Austria April, 1792
• Unrest in France
• Monarch overthrown

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Food Riots (early 1792)
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Parisians at the Tuileries (June 20, 1792)
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Monarch Overthrown
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Massacre of Prisoners at St. Germain
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Phase 2 The Republic (August, 1792-1795)
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Groups in the legislature

• Marsh or Plain (independent)
• Girondins (tending to be more bourgeois)
• Jacobins or Mountain (more radical)

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1793 War, Unrest, Conscription

• Killing of the King
• War against England and Holland (February)
• Food scarcity
• Military conscription
• War on Spain (March)

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Execution of Louis XVI (January, 1793)
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February, March,1793

• Revolt by enragés in Paris
• The Convention sets up "extraordinary criminal
  tribunal
• Revolts in Vendée (peasants, aristocracy,
  Catholics, and royalists)
• Paris communes set up committees of surveillance

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April, 1793

• Committee of Public Safety
• Robespierre advocates new constitution
• restrictions on property rights
• society has duty towards all citizens

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(No Transcript)
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May, 1793

• Commission of Twelve established

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Constitution of 1793

• Right to work
• Right to education
• Extension of franchise
• Principle that private property less important
  than liberty and social order
• Principle that people have right and duty to
  revolt
• NEVER HAPPENED

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Assassination of Marat
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An English View of Corday
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July, 1793

• Hoarding a capital crime
• War is not going well

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August, 1793

• Metric system new national standard
• Levée en masse
• War not going well
• San-Culottes demand
• Arrest of traitors
• Establishment of revolutionary army to put down
  revolts

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Fox
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The Terror (September 1793-July, 1794)

• Popular revolts
• Power grabs
• Food price and wage controls
• New calendar
• Revolutionary festivals
• Repression

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The Terror
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(No Transcript)
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September, 1793

• Siege of Lyon
• All women to wear the tricolor
• Law of general maximum

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Siege of Lyon
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October, 1793

• Republican calendar
• Queen guillotined

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• Republican Calendar
• 12 months of 30 days each
• Months named after flowers, vegetables, farming
  utensils

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Queen Guillotined
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Festival of ReasonNovember, 1793
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December, 1793

• Vendée revolt essentially over
• Centralization of power

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December, 1793

• Danton urges peace and end to Terror

• Robespierre says Terror a necessary war

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February 4, 1794, slavery abolished throughout
France
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February-March, 1794Laws of Ventose

• Seizure and redistribution of property belonging
  to anyone not working for the Republic

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March-July, 1794

• Struggles for power within revolutionary
  government
• Guillotining of Hebertists
• Guillotining of Danton and his followers
• Festival of Supreme Being
• Wage and price control law

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Festival of the Supreme Being
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Thermidor (July, 1794)
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The Directory (1795-1799

• For republic but against social democracy
• Strong central government
• Power more in legislature than in executive
  branch
• Wages rising more slowly than prices
• Insurrections
• Repression of sans-culottes

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Phase 4 Napoleon (1799-1815)
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Question Were the original goals accomplished?