French Revolution

Setting the Stage• 1789-1799 (coming of Napoleon)

• Key phrase: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”

• How does this indicate Enlightenment ideology?

• Spark: Louis XVI’s need for tax money after American Revolution

Calling of the Estates General• France’s version of Parliament

• hasn’t been called since Louis XIV’s reign--why?

• called for new tax

Calling the Estates General

Problem: Voting Rights and Inequality• 1st Estate: Clergy

• 200,000 ppl (1%); 1 vote in EG; 2% income tax; 20% land

• 2nd Estate: Nobility

• 600,000 ppl (2%); 1 vote in EG; 0% income tax; 10% land

• 3rd Estate: bourgeoisie, merchants, artisans, peasants, serfs

• 2,500,000 ppl (97%); 1 vote in EG; 50% income tax; 70% land

• Obvious inequalities have 3rd Estate MAD!

Formation of National Assembly• Due to inequality, 3rd Estate (with some 1st and 2nd) form the

National Assembly

• opposed by 1st and 2nd Estates

• locked out of building--meet at a local tennis court and take the Tennis Court Oath, promising to meet until new constitution is written and accepted

Storming of the Bastille• following EG and bad harvests, as well as ticked off with traditional

powers, peasants storm the Bastille, a French prison in Paris

• take it and free prisoners

• led to Declaration of Rights...

• Sig: successful attack on Old Regime

Declaration of Rights of Man and the Citizen• written by National Assembly

• very similar to American Declaration of Independence

• NOT a constitution but a list of beliefs and principles

• Enlightenment ideas

• Women left out (later addressed by Olympe de Gouges)

Women’s March• bread march

• march from Paris to Versailles, make Louis XVI prisoner

We want the baker,the baker’s wife, and

the baker’s boy!

Civil Constitution of the Clergy• Clergy had to accept loyalty to France, not pope

• take some Church lands

1791 Constitution• “Accepted” by King Louis

• makes France a Constitutional Monarchy on the lines of England

• later, King Louis XVI tries to escape--radicals see this as opposition and a new phase of the revolution occurs

Radicalization of the Revolution• after Louis’s flight, calls by radicals to end monarchy

• Jacobins: radicals; king could/would not guarantee liberties

• Danton, Marat, Robespierre

• Declaration of Pilnitz

• HRE, Austria say that France MUST keep Louis--probably signed his death warrant by doing so

• France declared war

Radicalization• Louis and Marie-Antoinette executed 1793

• Revolutionaries turn on themselves: Reign of Terror

• Robespierre and Committee on Public Safety

• New Symbols, New Calendar, New Fashion, New Technology, New beliefs, executions (16-50,000)

Death of Marat

Committee on Public Safety• nationalistic--good of the country (Rousseau, general will)

• levee en masse--nationwide draft, huge armies

• led by Robespierre

• had Danton executed--opposition, thought R was going too far

Notre Dame as “Temple of Reason”

Sans-Culottes• New fashion of the revolutionaries

• no more knee breeches

Conservative Reaction• 1794, belief that Robespierre/CPS has gone too far

• R executed

• Directory takes over

• oligarchic

• conservative

• corrupt

• led to Napoleon (1799)