Chapter 18 The French Revolution

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Chapter 18The French Revolution
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Stages of French Revolution

• Reform
• Radicalization
• Civil War
• Foreign War
• Reaction
• One-Man Dictatorship

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Long Term Causes

• Inability of the monarchy to reform the taxation
  system.
• Lack of political representation for commoners
  and nobles.
• Impact of the Enlightenment.
• Influence of English and American Revolutions.

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Immediate Causes

• Louis XVI brings France to financial bankruptcy.
• Louis summons the Estates-General (1789)
• Significance Has not been in practice since
  1614. Louis essentially admitting that the king
  alone cannot solve the financial crisis.
• Undemocratic features of the Estates-General
• Cahiers
• Poor economic conditions of the peasants and
  working people.

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1789

• French Revolution brings to foreground
• Civic Equality
• Popular Sovereignty that challenges major
  political and social institutions.
• Brings about a quarter century of war which would
  result in millions of casualities.

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Crisis of the French Monarchy

• By 1780s royal government could not command
  sufficient taxes to finance itself.
• Deeply in debt due to Seven Years War and
  American Revolution.
• Debt neither overly large nor disproportionate to
  debt of other European powers.
• Problem is the inability of the government to tap
  nations wealth.
• France is a rich nation with an impoverished
  government.

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Monarchy Seeks New Taxes

• Parlements French royal courts dominated by
  hereditary nobility
• made it difficult to tax the wealthy
• were abolished by Louis XV and reinstated by
  Louis XVI
• enjoyed positive public opinion because they
  opposed the monarchy
• Portray the monarchy as despoticacting
  arbitrarily in defiance of the law

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Image is Everything

• Louis XV Sex scandals in which memory still
  lingered.
• Marie Antoinette Reputation of Sexual
  misconduct, extravagance.
• Louis XVI and family rarely left the grounds of
  Versailles.
• There was an image problem for the monarchy.
• The monarch was tough to like.

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Louis XV
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Louis XVI
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Marie Antoinette
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Jacques Necker

• Swiss banker
• Royal director-general of finances
• Argued that the economy was really not that bad
• Revealed a large portion of royal costs went to
  pensions for aristocrats
• Angered the aristocrats and as a result left
  office

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Calonnes Reform Plan

• Charles Alexandre Calonne was minister of finance
• Wanted to introduce a new land tax that all
  landowners regardless of class would have to pay.
  (This would allow monarchy to abandon other
  indirect taxes.)
• New local assemblies made up of landowners based
  on land more than social status would determine
  any additional taxes.
• Problem All of these initiatives undermine
  political and social power of French aristocracy.
• Solution Call in the Estates-General.

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Assembly of Nobles

• aristocracy refused to accept Calonnes plan
• called for the reappointment of Necker
• claimed only the Estates General, a medieval
  institution not used since 1614, could consent to
  new taxes

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The Three Estates

• three groups or estates existed in France
• First Estate clergy
• Second Estate nobility
• Third Estate everyone else including middle
  class
• Third Estate warned it would not let the first
  two estates rule the future of the nation

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Debate over Estate Voting

• Assembly of Notables demanded each estate have an
  equal amount of representatives
• Parlement of Paris believed that each estate
  should have just one vote each
• the First and Second Estates would automatically
  outvote the Third 2-1
• Third Estate immediately bemoans the arrogance of
  the aristocracy and now distrusts it.

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Third Estate Victory

• December 1788 royal council announced Third
  Estate would elect twice as many representatives
  to the Estates General as either of the other two
  Estates
• liberal nobles and clergy supported this move
• method of voting had not been decided when the
  Estates General gathered at Versailles in May,
  1789

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The Cahiers de Doleances

• cahiers de doleances list of grievances
  registered by local electors to be presented to
  the king
• the grievances were not all that different from
  the Third Estate
• government waste
• indirect taxes
• church taxes
• corruption
• the cahiers wanted
• more equitable taxes
• measures to facilitate trade and commerce
• free press

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The National Assembly

• combination of the Third and Second Estate, along
  with some liberal nobles
• officially declared on June 17, 1789

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The Tennis Court Oath

• the National Assembly gathers in an indoor tennis
  court to draft a new constitution
• King Louis XVI capitulates and orders the First
  and Second Estates to meet with the General
  Assembly
• the National Assembly renames itself the National
  Constituent Assembly and is composed of members
  of all three estates who shared goals of
  administrative, constitutional and economic
  reform of the country

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Overthrow of the Bastille

• winter and spring 1788-1789 high bread prices
  cause shortages
• July 11, 1789 Louis XVI dismisses finance
  minister Necker
• July 14, 1789 large crowds against Louis XVI go
  the Bastille a fortress that once held political
  prisoners looking to arm the militia (98
  Parisians, several troops and the governor of the
  Bastille are killed
• July 15, 1789 the National Guard, led by
  Marquis de Lafayette, officially take over the
  Bastille. Louis XVI days later recognizes the new
  government

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The Great Fear

• peasant disturbances intensify in the countryside
  as the aristocrats land is taken over
• August 4, 1789 Several nobles and clergymen
  renounce their nobility rights at the National
  Constituent Assembly to quell the riots
• Old Regime is officially abolished

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The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen

• new constitution drafted on August 27, 1789
• very similar to the Declaration of Independence
  in proclaiming liberty, freedom, and natural
  rights
• two most powerful ideas were civic equality and
  popular sovereignty
• women not included

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The Womens March on Versailles

• women upset about bread prices gather at
  Versailles October 5, 1789
• King Louis XVI forced to go back to Paris

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The Political Reconstruction of France

• Constitution of 1791 - Legislative Assembly
  becomes main law making body of France / monarch
  has limited powers
• only active citizens those paying annual taxes
  could vote
• Olympe de Gouges she composes Declaration of
  Rights of Women, using the mens declaration it
  calls for women to be treated as citizens
• provinces and parlements replaced by departments
  equally sized administrative units

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The Economic Reconstruction of France

• workers organizations forbidden by the Chapelier
  Law
• land belonging to the Roman Catholic Church is
  confiscated and sold creating
• further inflation
• religious schism
• civil war
• the assignats government bonds from the sale of
  church property used as currency, but used so
  often their value went down raising inflation

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The Civil Constitution of the Clergy (July, 1790)

• transformed the Roman Catholic Church into a
  secular state
• embittered relations between the church and the
  state
• Pope Pius VI condemns the both the Civil
  Constitution of the Clergy and the Declaration of
  the Rights of Man and Citizen

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Counterrevolutionary Activity

• emigres aristocrats who left France for
  bordering countries
• King Louis XVI attempts to flee France, but is
  caught
• Declaration of Pillnitz Emperor Leopold II of
  Austria and King Frederick William II of Prussia
  announce that if another European power joins
  them they will intervene in France to protect the
  monarchy

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Louis XVI Flees and is Returned
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End of the MonarchyA Second Revolution

• National Convention closes having completed task
  of reconstructing France.
• The new Assembly will be comprised of entirely
  new members.
• The Legislative Assembly will be short lived
  1791-1792.

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The Jacobins

• A club of politically like-minded people from the
  Third Estate who wanted a republic rather than a
  monarchy.
• Most advanced political group in National
  Constitute Assembly.
• Drew form Rousseau equality, popular
  sovereignty, civic virtue.

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Girondists

• Came from Gironde in SW France.
• Part of the Jacobins that assumed leadership of
  the Assembly.
• Determined to oppose forces of counter-revolutiona
  ries.

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Girondists

• They
• Forced emigres to return or suffer loss of
  property.
• Clergy to support CC of C or lose state pensions.
• King vetoes both actions.
• declared war on Austria (April 1792). This begins
  a series of conflicts in western Europe that will
  not end until the fall of napoleon at waterloo in
  1815.

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Girondists

• Believed war would preserve the revolution.
  Louis also favors warwhat???????
• Feel that would strengthen the power of the
  monarchy.
• Also hoped that foreign forces would defeat
  French army and restore the Old Regime.
• Women fight for the right to bear arms!!!!!!
• Forced Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette into
  imprisonment.

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The Convention and theSans-Culottes

• The September Massacres
• Paris Commune (a committee of reps from the wards
  of the city). Became an independent political
  force who protected the gains of the revolution
  gains internal and external enemies.
• 1,200 people murdered in prisons.
• Assumed all prisoners were counter-revolutionaries
  .
• New hostility grows for the Revolutionary
  Government.
• Convention September 21, 1792 Legislative
  Assembly calls for universal male suffrage and
  for France to be a republic.

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The Convention and theSans-Culottes

• Sans-Culottes
• name comes from the long trousers of the working
  people
• led a Revolution more radical than the Girondists
• anti-monarchical, republican, and wanted the
  people to make the decisions.
• These trades people and artisans sought immediate
  relief from food shortages and rising prices.
• Resent social inequality.
• Policies of the Jacobins began to cooperate
  with sans-culottes despite not having a problem
  with wealthy
• execution of Louis XVI beheaded on January 21,
  1793

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Louis XVI BeheadedJanuary 21, 1793
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Louis XVI BeheadedJanuary 21, 1793
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Europe at War with the Revolution

• Initial reaction to revolution ambivalence
• Some see it as wise, rational, reorganization of
  government.
• Some thought this would cause for France to be
  irrelevant.

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Edmund Burke

• Wrote Reflections on the Revolution in France
  (1790) said revolution will end in military
  despotism.
• Blind rationalism that ignored complexities of
  political development and social relationships.
• American Revolution hero Thomas Paine disagreed
  with him.
• Other European nations agreed with Burke when
  France declared war on Austria.

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William Pitt

• Britains prime minister during Revolution
• approved for acts suspending habeas corpus (writ
  requiring a person to be brought before a judge
  or court, esp. for investigation of a restraint
  of the person's liberty, used as a protection
  against illegal imprisonment. )
• Certain ideas considered treasonable

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The Reign of TerrorWar with Europe

• There was a sense that the achievements of the
  revolution were in trouble by the wars with
  Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, Spain, Sardinia,
  and Holland.
• These governments formed the First Coalition.
• Were attempting to protect their political,
  social, and economic structures against the
  aggression of the revolution.
• Real and imagined enemies of revolution arrested
  and executed (peasants, nobles, clergy, business
  people and ex-revolutionary leaders)

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The Republic Defended.

• The Committee of Public Safety carried out the
  duties of the executive branch in dictatorial
  fashion
• The levee en masse led by Lazare Carnot, had
  military requisition on the entire population
• agreed to ceiling on prices in accordance to the
  sans-culotte
• carried out more executions

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Maximilien de Robespierre

• dominant figure of the National Assembly and
  Committee of Public Safety
• had support of sans-culotte
• called for an assault on all enemies of the
  Revolution.

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Robespierre
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Repression of Republican Women

• all womens societies banned
• barred from Convention
• Olympe de Gouges executed

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De-Christianization

• new calendar adopted
• churches destroyed
• some clergy executed

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Revolutionary Tribunals

• executions
• Marie Antoinette and royal family
• Girondist politicians
• peasants opposed to the Revolution
• members of sans-culottes
• executions carried out by guillotine, shootings
  and drownings

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The End of the Terror

• Robespierre turns on leaders both from the
  political left and right
• Law of 22 Prairial tribunal could convict
  suspects without evidence against them
• fearing he was turning into a dictator,
  Robespierre and 80 of his supporters are executed
• In all 25,000 victims

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The Thermidorian Reaction

• influence of wealthy middle-class and
  professional people replaces sans-culottes
• Committee of Public Safety diminished
• Law of 22 Prairial repealed
• many Jacobin leaders executed (white terror)
• traditional roles of men and women in addition to
  the church reestablished

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Constitution of Year III

• Thermidorian reaction leads to yet another
  Constitution, Constitution of the Year III
• 5 Fructidor of the Year III in the French
  Revolutionary calendar
• was a calendar created and implemented during the
  French revolution, and used by the French
  government for about 12 years from late 1793 to
  1805, and for 18 days in 1871 in Paris.
• Rejected both constitutional monarchy and
  democracy

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Constitution of Year III

• Established two houses of the legislature and an
  executive branch.
• Council of Elders, upper body men over forty
  who are either married or widows.
• Council of 500, men of at least 30 married or
  single
• Directory, executive 5 people
• Political system based on rank and birth replaced
  by system of civic equality and social status.

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End of Sans-Culottes

• sans-culottes replaced by the Directory
• peace treaties with Spain and Prussia
• Gracchus Babeuf attempts to overthrow Directory
  with the Conspiracy of Equals
• wanted to distribute property even amongst all
  citizens
• plot fails and Babeuf is executed
• Directory weak due to
• suppression of sans-culotttes
• the Two-Thirds law favored people already in
  office
• Catholic royalist revival
• Wars
• Corrupt

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Perspective

• French Revolution central political event of
  modern European History.
• Political and Social forces that shape Europe
  for next 200 years.
• Began with clash between nobility and monarchy.
• Third Estate makes its demands known.
• Nobles surrender traditional social privilege.

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Perspective

• Church has property confiscated and for a time,
  an attempt to de-Christianize France.
• Land changes hands.
• Thousands die during the Terror (25,000)
• France at war with rest of Europe.
• Desire for stability, combined with determination
  to defeat foreign enemies of the revolution work
  to the advantage of the ARMY

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Perspective

• The French Revolution, which had originated as a
  movement for democracy culminated into a military
  dictatorship.