The French Revolution

I. The Crisis of the French Monarchy

A. The cost of the Seven Years' War
1. caused a financial crisis
a. France's financial situation was made worse by the expenses
spent helping the Americans in the American Revolutionary War.
B. The Monarchy seeks new taxes
1. The monarchy needed to raise new taxes
a. New taxes had to either be paid by the nobility, or be approved
by the nobility.
2. France's noble class had been trying to reassert power
a. The monarch's need for cash made it possible for the noble class
to gain power from the
b. The noble class forced Louis XVI to reconvene the Estates
General
i Had not met since 1614.
C. Calonne’s reform plan and the assembly of notables
1. Charles alexander de Calonne is the minister of finance
a. Proposed to encourage internal trade, to lower taxes, and get
peasants paid for their services
b. Urged land tax
i Required of all landowners regardless of social status
ii Monarchy would not have to ask for additional taxes
c. Intended to established local assemblies
i Voting power would depended on the amount of land owned
II. The revolution of 1789
A. The estates general becomes the national assembly
1. The estates general was called because of the conflict between the
French monarchy and the aristocracy
2. The three estates started to fight with each other
a. The first estates is the clergy, the second is the nobility and the
third was every else
i Even though, the third estate had representatives
3. Debate over organization and voting
a. The aristocracy wanted to limit the third estate by:
i Demanded equal representatives in each estate and that the
voting be conducted by order rather by head
 Meaning that each estate would get one vote
4. Doubling the third estates
a. The royal council doubled the third estate
i Strengthening the hand of the bourgeoisie and the nobility.
5. Cashiers de dalliances
a. Meaning “lists of grievances”. Petitions for reforms submitted to
the French crown when the estates general met in 1789.
 6. The third estate creates the national assembly
a. On June 20, 1789, as the delegates to the Estates General were
attempting to resolve procedural questions
i so that they could meet, the Third Estate launched the
National Assembly
 later the National Constituent Assembly
7. the tennis court oath
a. the national assembly were locked out of their usual meeting so
they moved it to the tennis court
b. the members took an oath to continue to sit until they made a
constitution
i this is the tennis court oath
B. Fall of the Bastille
1. On July 14, 1789, a Paris mob stormed the Bastille
C. The “Great Fear” and the night of August 4
1. The great fear is a movement associated with popular urban
disturbances
2. Rumors spread that the royal troops were being sent into the rural
districts
a. Result: The "Great Fear" intensified the peasant disturbances
i aimed at limiting aristocratic privilege
3. On August 4, 1789, nobles and liberals in the National Constituent
Assembly renounced their privileges.
a. all French men were subject to the same laws
D. The Declaration of the rights of man and citizen
1. On August 27, 1789, the Assembly issued the Declaration of the
Rights of Man and Citizen, using language of the Enlightenment and
Virginia's 1776 Declaration of Rights.
a. The declaration proclaimed the men were “born an remain free
and equal in rights”
b. Gov. had to protect the rights of the citizens
c. Citizens were equal before the law
d. Citizens had due process and they had innocence until proven
guilty
e. Had freedom of religion and the amount earned determined the
taxes paid
2. The Declaration of the rights of man and citizen did not apply to
women
E. The Parisian women’s march on Versailles
a. On October 5, 1789, Parisian women marched on Versailles, and
forced Louis XVI to relocate from Versailles to Paris.
III. The Reconstruction of France
A. Political Reorganization
1. The National Constituent Assembly reorganized France as a
constitutional monarchy
 a. With a rational administration, an unregulated economy, and a
state-controlled church. Property, in all its forms, was protected,
and wealth – rather than bloodlines and titles – determined
power.
2. Active and passive citizens
a. The Assembly divided the citizenry into "active" (propertied
males) and "passive" (everyone else) elements.
3. Olympe de Gouges’s Declaration of the Rights of Woman
a. Olympe de Gouges protested with her "Declaration of the Rights
of Woman."
B. Economic policy
1. Workers’ organization forbidden
a. Local and judicial administration was reorganized
i and workers' organizations were banned
2. Confiscation of Church Lands
a. the Assembly confiscated all land and property of the Roman
Catholic Church in France
i In order to pay the royal debt.
b. Under the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, the Roman Catholic
Church was under the control of the French state.
c. These moves against the church created massive opposition and
the royal family attempted to flee France.
d. The National Constituent Assembly closed in September 1791
e. The newly reconstructed nation was not stable
IV. The end of the monarchy: A second Revolution
A. The short-lived (1791-1792) Legislative Assembly was profoundly
factionalized.
1. Jacobins had lobbied for a republic, not a constitutional monarchy,
during the National Constituent Assembly
a. A faction within the Jacobin faction, the Girondists, took the
leadership of the Legislative Assembly.
2. On April 20, 1792, the Legislative Assembly declared war on
Austria.
a. The Girondists hoped war would suppress the counterrevolution
b. Louis XVI also supported war with Austria, hoping that war would
strengthen the monarchy and perhaps lead to the restoration of
the Old Regime.
c. In August, 1792, a Parisian mob forced the royal family to take
refuge in the Legislative Assembly
i Then on, Louis XVI was unable to function as a monarch.
ii The Paris Commune executed around 1,2000 inmates of the
city's jails in the September Massacres, and on September 21,
1792, the Convention met to write a democratic constitution
for a French republic
 d. . Radical Jacobins with the sans-culottes constituted the
"Mountain," the faction responsible for trying and executing
Louis XVI in the winter of 1792-1793.
e. In February 1793, the Convention declared war on Great Britain,
Holland, and Spain; in March, the Vendee erupted in a royalist
revolt.
f. The Girondists were losing control.
V. Europe at War with the Revolution
A. Edmund Burke attacks the revolution
1. British statesman Edmund Burke, in his 1790 Reflections on the
Revolution in France, was the first observer to articulate theoretical
criticisms of the French Revolution, and to predict more turmoil as a
result of the revolution.
B. Suppression of the reform in Britain
1. Adopted repressive policies in response to France's ideas and
military actions.
2. William Pitt the Younger suppressed political freedoms in Great
Britain.
3. By April 1793, Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, Spain, Sardinia, and
Holland formed the First Coalition, an alliance to protect their social
structures, political systems, and economic interests.
VI. The reign of terror
A. The republic defended
1. In early 1793, mobilization for war touched almost every aspect of
French life.
2. THE COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY
a. Formed in April 1793 to facilitate the war effort.
i its leader Maximilien Robespierre
b. Briefly exercised almost dictatorial control over French life.
c. In August, the entire nation was requisitioned into national
service
d. At about the same time, the Reign of Terror began
i claim close to 25,000 lives
B. the “republic of virtue” and Robespierre’s justification of terror
1. Robespierre and others in the Convention believed they were
creating a "republic of virtue," in which civic virtue would replace
personal self-interest, and the good of the republic would replace
private good.
2. Repression of the society of revolutionary republican women
a. The Society of Revolutionary Women, militant supporters of the
Jacobins, were among the first groups to be suppressed; Olympe
de Gouges was guillotined in November 1793.
3. De-Christianization
a. In November 1793, the Convention attempted to de-Christianize
France.
i Robespierre opposed this move
 b. In May 1794, he established the "Cult of the Supreme Being," a
deistic cult over which he presided.)
4. Revolutionary tribunals
a. The Convention established revolutionary tribunals in the
summer of 1793; the Terror's first victims were Marie Antoinette
and other members of the royal family, guillotined in October
1793.
5. The end of the terror
a. Revolutionaries turn against themselves
i Executions increased in early 1794, as Robespierre turned on
his political enemies, and a new law permitted convictions
even in the absence of substantial evidence.
b. Fall of Robespierre
i Finally, on July 27, 1794, Robespierre himself was arrested. He
was executed the next day,
 The Terror ended.
VII. The Thermidorian Reaction
A. The Thermidorian Reaction, which began with Robespierre's arrest and
execution and featured enactment of a new constitution, represented a tempering
of the revolution. Propertied middle-class and professional people replaced
the sans-culottes as the most influential group. The "white terror" turned violence
against some of those responsible for the Terror. Catholicism revived throughout
the country. Some progressive social legislation was repealed; women had, if
anything, fewer rights than they had in 1789.
B. Establishment od the directory
C. The Constitution of the Year III created a bicameral legislature, under a five-man
executive Directory, all limited to property-holding men. Voting was also limited to
property-holders and – significantly – soldiers.
D. Removal of the sans-culottes from political life
1. As the power of the sans-culottes waned, they and royalists revolted in Paris
in October 1795.
2. Napoleon Bonaparte was the general
a. Was in charge of putting down their insurrection.
3. Gracchus Babeuf led the equally unsuccessful Conspiracy of Equals in the
spring of 1796
a. He argued for more radical democracy and resulted in his execution.
4. The wars with Prussia and Spain ended in 1795,
a. But France remained at war with Austria and Great Britain.
5. The Directory came to rely on the army for stability.