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French Revolution 1789-1799
• What is wrong with the Ancien Regime?
Ancien Regime• Feudal system inequality• Deficit, Marie Antoinette/American Rev. War• Famine/bread shortages• Poor use of land, lack of Agricultural Revolution techniques• Feudal privileges kept peasants from hunting• Nobles taxing more• American Revolution debt and their ideas of liberty• Enlightenment ideals circulating still• Lack of education nation wide• Louis XVI weak as a king at a time when strength was needed.
Approximate, not exact…
• 20 % of budget available to develop France• 6% spent on Versailles/Louis/Antoinette• 50% interest payments on existing debt• 25% to maintain military
Louis XVI tries• Louis repeatedly appoints economic advisors
who all pretty much say the same thing which is tax the nobles but Paris Parlement won’t allow it.
• 1787 Louis calls an assembly of notables to gain support for taxing the wealth of France and they say no because they want more power in return which Louis is unwilling to grant.
Louis gets frustrated and dissolves the notables but parlement declare royal decrees null and void, this spreads so Louis forced
to invite Estates General• 1st Estate: clergy (many poor)• 2nd Estate: nobles (divided)• 3rd Estate: everybody 98% of France! (mostly mid-class)Allowed to bring cahiers
Estates General design1788 meet
• Separate meeting rooms per estate• 3rd Estate has many many more members.
Sieyes: “What is 3rd Estate? Everything”• Vote is taken by house…main sticking point• Some are switching sides, especially poor
clergy members
• Abbé Sieyès' pamphlet begins:-
The plan of this book is fairly simple. We must ask ourselves three questions.
1. What is the Third State? Everything.
2. What has it been until now in the political order? Nothing.
3. What does it want to be? Something....
and ends:-
The Third Estate embraces then all that which belongs to the nation; and all that which is not the Third Estate, cannot be regarded as being of the nation.
What is the Third Estate?
It is everything.
• Debate over how a new government should be created: many agreed on a constitutional monarchy but developed by whom?
• 3rd estate told by Louis XVI to wear specific costumes to identify them and locked out of meeting room, so…
Tennis Court Oath 1789, a National Assembly is born
• Louis’s reaction?Agree to let estates meet together and think on
constitution, or no wait, maybe hire 18,000 troops to push the men out, and yeah, yeah, try to be absolute again because Marie tells me to!
Louis tries to dismiss but forced to sign. Marie Antoinette advises not to. Louis hires troops around Versailles and Paris, people still
have no bread, leads to…
Growing discontent
• What do people of Paris want?Jobs and Bread and they think the King or the
Estates should provide it…Keep this in mind when we see the initial
popularity of the Mountain/Robespierre
July 14, Bastille stormed, this leads to…
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoXKrr14uY8
• Bastille
NOTHING
• No political prisoners found• No stockpile of weapons found
But it does show king the people are serious and willing to act on their discontent
But their belief in the king’s reaction leads to…
The Great Fear• Riots in fear of king’s revenge• Murder of nobles• Paris lost, LaFayette in charge.• Emigres• August 4 (thanks for
nothing)
National Assembly issues the Declaration of Rights of Man, but deadlock on new Constitution
• http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/declaration.html
Louis still slow in accepting reforms and people still hungry so…
Around 7,000 Women around Paris March on Versailles (12 miles), bring royal family to Paris
• The revolutionary debate was becoming widespread through the media. Cheap and widely circulated (1455 printing press so more and more could read)
Marat: Ami du Peuple, leftRivarol: Actes des Apotres, right
1790 (big legal year) Constituent Assembly• Created a legislative assembly with vast
powers• Constitutional monarch had powers but
mostly limited by the legislative body• Reformed judicial system
• Women’s rights expanded, but no voting rights and couldn’t hold office (Women’s clubs closed when women becoming too demanding)
• Economic advances as guilds, monopolies, barriers to trade gone.
• Clergy, Civil Constitution (July 1790) was a bad idea. Tolerance great but nationalizing the Church, bad.
• Few men could vote or run for office: based on land and wealth
Louis tries to escape with familyTrouble with finding letters/Declaration of Pilnitz 1791
• King is arrested and charged with treason
Constitution in the works and Assembly becoming divided
• Jacobins: wealthy theorists, split to:• Girondists: more active, crusade against
representatives of ancien regime (afraid Mountain could turn bloody dictators)
• Mountain: Robespierre/Danton radical (afraid Girondists could become more conservative)
• Sans-culottes: went back and forth between groups and their support was desired by both groups
• Louis is brought back to Paris where he accepts the new constitution.
• Celebration in the streets September 1791• Girondists believe war must be waged on foreign
powers…at first Louis says no but later agrees, why?
• Some European powers at first supported the French effort but peasant violence scared them away. Burke: Reflections on the French Revolution
• US supported verbally but did nothing. Paine: Rights of Man, elected to Assembly
• More suspicion about king getting aid so…
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Marseillaise#Lyrics
August 10, 1792 (year it’s getting really radical) sans culottes plan an insurrection and attack Swiss Guards at Tuileries • After funeral in September…Crazy crazy violence
everywhere (mostly sans-culottes). The Septembrists/September Massacres
• “We were hardly seated before a head at the end of a pike was presented at the window. Tison's wife screamed loudly; the murderers thought it was the queen's voice, and we heard the frantic laughs of those barbarians. Thinking that Her Majesty was still at table, they had raised the victim's head so that it could not escape her sight; it was that of the Princesse de Lamballe. Though bloody, it was not disfigured; her blond hair, still curling,
floated around the pike.”
• Legislative Assembly believed to be too conservative so forced out in favor of new elections (universal male suffrage) for a National Convention
• New government to draw a new constitution since as of August 10, 1792 France no longer had a monarch.
• Argument between Girondists and Mountain getting more heated:
Girondists: more along line of philosophes, snooty, poor people are gross…laissez faire. Revolution had gone far enough.
Mountain: end glaring inequality of wealth and abolish the misery of poverty. “No enemy to the Left.”
Mountain will win most support of the masses
Louis put on trial• Louis’s last speech to Assembly December 26, 1792.
“Speaking to you perhaps for the last time I declare to you that my conscience does not reproach me in any way and that my defenders have told you nothing but the truth. I have never feared a public examination of my conduct; but it wounds my heart to find in the indictment the charge that I wished to shed the people’s blood, and, above all, that the misfortunes of 10 August were attributable to me. I confess that the often repeated pledges that I have at all times given of my love for the people and the way in which I have always behaved seem to me an evident proof that I had little fear of endangering myself in order to spare their blood, and that these pledges and this behaviour should preserve me for ever from any such imputation.”
• Inevitable that king will be found guilty of treason, executed January 21, 1793
“…Frenchmen, I die innocent. I pardon the authors of my death. I pray God that the blood about to be spilt will never fall upon the
head of France…”Drums drown him out.
• Also country is at war with other European countries. All out chaos. War going badly as England reacts to Louis’s death and declares war: 1st Coalition:England, Holland, Prussia, Austria, Spain, Italy
• War miserable• Parisians still hungry• Riots• All out brawls in Convention• Girondists losing more and more ground• Committee of Public Safety created to calm
the storm. Robespierre becomes leader of committee.
Army called to arrest Girondists, May 31, 1793
1793 Constitution• Suffrage assured for men(but women’s clubs
closed since they discussed rights)• Social relief to the poor• Robespierre used planned economy and price
controlsOther developments:• Employment increase because of war efforts (total
war)• Church later becomes a house of reason for the
supreme being• New calendar with year zero and new months.
• Women had been extremely influential and involved and wanted rights:
• Olympe de Gouges• CondorcetBoth guillotined during The Terror
Robespierre and his Reign of Terror, Committee of Public Safety 1793
• “If the mainspring of popular government in peacetime is virtue, amid revolution it is at the same time virtue and terror: virtue, without which terror is fatal; terror, without which virtue is impotent. Terror is nothing but prompt, severe, inflexible justice; it is therefore an emanation of virtue. It is less a special principle than a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country's most pressing needs.”
• Robespierre goes after all “anti-revolutionaries” 40,000 in all, guillotines all over France, in Paris can kill 1 every 3 minutes
• At war, controls prices, only brown bread allowed, jobs, lessens anti-Christianization policy
• Goes after too many within government, wages low and terror is too much, so…
• Danton and others were sick at the bloodletting and wanted a constitutional government of the middle class.
• Hebert led a group who believed in the terror but seemed to threaten power of Robespierre
• Robespierre sent both men and supporters to the guillotine. So…
Robespierre executed July 28,1794
Danton Marie Antoinette Louis XVI Hebert Robespierre
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otnADq4Y0-A
• French Rev summary
Reign of Terror over and now White Terror (Thermidorean Reaction 1794-1795)
• Overturn liberal ideas and go back to conservative society with rich at the top.
• Kill supporters of Robespierre• Price controls over, embarrassed about being
rich over• Catholic Churches reopened, emigres return• Directory elected by legislative body runs
country• War going badly• Still riots over bread and poverty
Yet another constitution 1795
• Protected property rights• Re-established property requirements for
voting• Executive power in Directory• Bicameral legislature• Decreed amnesty to royalists and priestsInstability continued, the war effort was
overwhelming and the royalists rebelled…SO…
Two cartoons: one depicting event and one depicting significance (effects)
• Tennis Court Oath• Storming of Bastille• Great Fear• March on Versailles• Royal family tries to escape• September Massacres• Robespierre’s Reign of Terror
Napoleon Game• Your game board must represent Napoleon’s rule
in some creative way.• You must write out the rules so that anyone could
walk up and play after reading them.• Your game must be based upon who knows the
most about Napoleon using your question/answer cards
• You may use other cards or spaces on the board to penalize or move players but they need to have something to do with Napoleon’s history.
• Have fun!!!
