The French Revolution

French Revolution I INTRODUCTION

French Revolution, major transformation of the society and political system of France, lasting from

1789 to 1799. During the course of the Revolution, France was temporarily transformed from an

absolute monarchy, where the king monopolized power, to a republic of theoretically free and equal

citizens. The effects of the French Revolution were widespread, both inside and outside of France, and

the Revolution ranks as one of the most important events in the history of Europe.

During the ten years of the Revolution, France first transformed and then dismantled the Old Regime,

the political and social system that existed in France before 1789, and replaced it with a series of

different governments. Although none of these governments lasted more than four years, the many

initiatives they enacted permanently altered France’s political system. These initiatives included the

drafting of several bills of rights and constitutions, the establishment of legal equality among all

citizens, experiments with representative democracy, the incorporation of the church into the state,

and the reconstruction of state administration and the law code.

Many of these changes were adopted elsewhere in Europe as well. Change was a matter of choice in

some places, but in others it was imposed by the French army during the French Revolutionary Wars

(1792-1797) and the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815). To later generations of Europeans and non-

Europeans who sought to overturn their political and social systems, the French Revolution provided

the most influential model of popular insurrection until the Russian Revolutions of 1917.

II CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION

From the beginning of the 20th century until the 1970s, the French Revolution was most commonly

described as the result of the growing economic and social importance of the bourgeoisie, or middle

class. The bourgeoisie, it was believed, overthrew the Old Regime because that regime had given

power and privilege to other classes—the nobility and the clergy—who prevented the bourgeoisie from

advancing socially and politically. Recently this interpretation has been replaced by one that relies less

on social and economic factors and more on political ones. Economic recession in the 1770s may have

frustrated some bourgeois in their rise to power and wealth, and rising bread prices just before the

Revolution certainly increased discontent among workers and peasants. Yet it is now commonly

believed that the revolutionary process started with a crisis in the French state.

By 1789 many French people had become critical of the monarchy, even though it had been largely

successful in militarily defending France and in quelling domestic religious and political violence. They

resented the rising and unequal taxes, the persecution of religious minorities, and government

interference in their private lives. These resentments, coupled with an inefficient government and an

antiquated legal system, made the government seem increasingly illegitimate to the French people.

The royal court at Versailles, which had been developed to impress the French people and Europe

generally, came to symbolize the waste and corruption of the entire Old Regime.

A Parlements and Philosophes

During the 18th century, criticism of the French monarchy also came from people who worked for the

Old Regime. Some of the king’s own ministers criticized past practices and proposed reforms, but a

more influential source of dissent was the parlements, 13 regional royal courts led by the Parlement of

Paris. The parlements were empowered to register royal decrees, and all decrees had to be registered

by the parlements before becoming law. In this capacity, the parlements frequently protested royal

initiatives that they believed to threaten the traditional rights and liberties of the people. In widely

distributed publications, they held up the image of a historically free France and denounced the

absolute rule of the crown that in their view threatened traditional liberties by imposing religious

orthodoxy and new taxes.

These protests blended with those of others, most notably an influential group of professional

intellectuals called the philosophes. Like those who supported the parlements, the philosophes did not

advocate violent revolution. Yet, they claimed to speak on behalf of the public, arguing that people

had certain natural rights and that governments existed to guarantee these rights. In a stream of

pamphlets and treatises—many of them printed and circulated illegally—they ridiculed the Old

Regime’s inefficiencies and its abuses of power.

During this time, the parlementaires and the philosophes together crafted a vocabulary that would be

used later to define and debate political issues during the Revolution. They redefined such terms as

despotism, or the oppression of a people by an arbitrary ruler; liberty and rights; and the nation.

B Fiscal Crisis

The discontent of the French people might not have brought about a political revolution if there had

not been a fiscal crisis in the late 1780s. Like so much else in the Old Regime, the monarchy’s

financial system was inefficient and antiquated. France had neither a national bank nor a centralized

national treasury. The nobility and clergy—many of them very wealthy—paid substantially less in taxes

than other groups, notably the much poorer peasantry. Similarly, the amount of tax charged varied

widely from one region to another.

Furthermore, the monarchy almost always spent more each year than it collected in taxes;

consequently, it was forced to borrow, which it did increasingly during the 18th century. Debt grew in

part because France participated in a series of costly wars—the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-

1748), the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), and the American Revolution (1775-1783). Large existing

debts and a history of renouncing earlier ones meant that the country was forced to borrow at higher

interest rates than some other countries, further adding to the already massive debt. By 1789 the

state was forced to spend nearly half its yearly revenues paying the interest it owed.

B1 Attempts at Reform

Louis XVI

Louis XVI of France was the grandson of King Louis XV and was married to Marie-Antoinette. Louis was considered

a well-intentioned but weak king. A heavy tax burden and court extravagances led eventually to a popular revolt

against him and paved the way for the French Revolution. Louis was guillotined by the revolutionary regime in

1793.

Erich Lessing /Art Resource, NY

Financial reform was attempted before 1789. Upon his accession to the throne in 1774, Louis XVI

appointed the reform-minded Anne Robert Jacques Turgot as chief finance minister. Between 1774

and 1776 Turgot sought to cut government expenses and to increase revenues. He removed

government restrictions on the sale and distribution of grain in order to increase grain sales and, in

turn, government revenue. Jacques Necker, director of government finance between 1777 and 1781,

reformed the treasury system and published an analysis of the state of government finance in 1781 as

a means to restore confidence in its soundness. But most of these reforms were soon undone as the

result of pressure from a variety of financial groups, and the government continued to borrow at high

rates of interest through the 1780s.

Charles Alexandre de Calonne was appointed minister of finance in 1783, and three years later he

proposed a new general plan resembling Turgot’s. He wanted to float new loans to cover immediate

expenses, revoke some tax exemptions, replace older taxes with a new universal land tax and a stamp

tax, convene regional assemblies to oversee the new taxes, and remove more restrictions from the

grain trade.

B2 Assembly of Notables and Estates-General

To pressure the parlements into accepting the plan, Calonne decided to gain prior approval of it from

an Assembly of Notables—a group of hand-picked dignitaries he thought would sympathize with his

views. But Calonne had badly miscalculated. Meeting in January 1787, the assembly refused to believe

that a financial crisis really existed. They had been influenced by Necker’s argument that state

finances were sound and suspected that the monarchy was only trying to squeeze more money from

the people. They insisted on examining state accounts. Despite a public appeal for support, Calonne

was fired and replaced by Loménie de Brienne in April 1787.

Brienne was also unable to win the support of the assembly, and in May 1787 it was dismissed. Over

the summer and early fall, Brienne repeatedly tried to strike a compromise with the Parlement of

Paris. But the compromise fell through when the king prevented the Parlement from voting on

proposed loans, an act that was seen as yet more evidence of despotism. In May 1788 the

government abolished all the parlements in a general restructuring of the judiciary.

Public response to the actions of the king was strong and even violent. People began to ignore royal

edicts and assault royal officials, and pamphlets denouncing despotism inundated the country. At the

same time, people began to call for an immediate meeting of the Estates-General to deal with the

crisis. The Estates-General was a consultative assembly composed of representatives from the three

French estates, or legally defined social classes: clergy, nobility, and commoners. It had last been

convened in 1614. Under increasing political pressure and faced with the total collapse of its finances

in August 1788, the Old Regime began to unravel. Brienne was dismissed, Necker reinstated, and the

Estates-General was called to meet on May 1, 1789.

III BEGINNING OF REVOLUTION

Almost immediately contention arose regarding voting procedures in the upcoming Estates-General. In

its last meeting, voting had been organized by estate, with each of the three estates meeting

separately and each having one vote. In this way the privileged classes had combined to outvote the

third estate, which constituted more than 90 percent of the population. In registering the edict to

convene the Estates-General, the Parlement of Paris, which had been reinstated by the monarchy on

September 23, 1788, ruled in favor of keeping this form of voting. The Parlement probably did this

more to prevent the monarchy from potentially exploiting any new voting system to its advantage

than to preserve noble privilege. However, many observers read this decision as a betrayal of the third

estate. As a result, a flood of pamphlets appeared demanding a vote by head at the Estates-General—

that is, a procedure whereby each deputy was to cast one vote in a single chamber composed of all

three estates. This method would give each estate a number of votes that more accurately

represented its population and would make it more difficult for the first two estates to routinely

outvote the third. Now two battles were being waged at the same time: one to protect the nation’s

liberty against royal despotism, and the other over how the nation would be represented in the

Estates-General.

During the early months of 1789, the three estates prepared for the coming meeting by selecting

deputies and drawing up cahiers des doléances (lists of grievances). These lists reflected

overwhelming agreement in favor of limiting the power of the king and his administrators and

establishing a permanent legislative assembly. In an effort to satisfy the third estate, the monarchy

had agreed to double the number of their representatives but then took no firm stand on whether the

voting would proceed by estate or by head.

When the Estates-General assembled at Versailles in May 1789, the monarchy proposed no specific

financial plan for debate and left the voting issue unsettled. As a result, the estates spent their time

engaged in debate of the voting procedure, and little was accomplished.

A National Assembly

David’s Oath of the Tennis Court

On June 20, 1789, in response to a financial crisis in France, representatives of the common people gathered at a

tennis court at Versailles after the king had deprived them of their usual meeting place. They swore not to disband

until they had drawn up a new constitution, an event known as the Tennis Court Oath. French artist Jacques-Louis

David depicted the event in this painting from 1790-1801 now in the Musée Carnavalet in Paris.

Giraudon/Art Resource, NY

Five wasted weeks later, the third estate finally took the initiative by inviting the clergy and nobility to

join them in a single-chambered legislature where the voting would be by head. Some individual

members of the other estates did so, and on June 17, 1789, they together proclaimed themselves to

be the National Assembly (also later called the Constituent Assembly).

When officials locked their regular meeting place to prepare it for a royal address, members of the

National Assembly concluded their initiative was about to be crushed. Regrouping at a nearby indoor

tennis court on June 20, they swore not to disband until France had a constitution. This pledge

became known as the Tennis Court Oath.

B Storming of the Bastille

Fall of the Bastille

On July 14, 1789 an angry mob, tired of the oppressive brutality of the French monarchy, captured the Bastille, the

royal prison in Paris.


On June 23, 1789, Louis XVI belatedly proposed a major overhaul of the financial system, agreed to

seek the consent of the deputies for all new loans and taxes, and proposed other important reforms.

But he spoiled the effect by refusing to recognize the transformation of the Estates-General into the

National Assembly and by insisting upon voting by estate—already a dying cause. Moreover, he

inspired new fears by surrounding the meeting hall of the deputies with a large number of soldiers.

Faced with stiffening resistance by the third estate and increasing willingness of deputies from the

clergy and nobility to join the third estate in the National Assembly, the king suddenly changed course

and agreed to a vote by head on June 27.

Despite much rejoicing, suspicions of the king’s intentions ran high. Royal troops began to thicken

near Paris, and on July 11 the still-popular Necker was dismissed. To people at the time and to many

later on, these developments were clear signs that the king sought to undo the events of the previous

weeks.

Crowds began to roam Paris looking for arms to fight off a royal attack. On July 14 these crowds

assaulted the Bastille, a large fortress on the eastern edge of the city. They believed that it contained

munitions and many prisoners of despotism, but in fact, the fortress housed only seven inmates at the

time. The storming of the Bastille marked a turning point—attempts at reform had become a full-scale

revolution. Faced with this insurrection, the monarchy backed down. The troops were withdrawn, and

Necker was recalled.

IV THE MODERATE REVOLUTION

National Assembly, August 4, 1789

French citizens cheer as members of the National Assembly announce the decision to abolish the privileges of the

nobility. Before the night of August 4, 1789, was over, the assembly had abolished the feudal system in France.

© Cos; Pierre Boulat/Woodfin Camp/PNI

In the year leading up to the storming of the Bastille, the economic problems of many common people

had become steadily worse, largely because poor weather conditions had ruined the harvest. As a

result, the price of bread—the most important food of the poorer classes—increased. Tensions and

violence grew in both the cities and the countryside during the spring and summer of 1789. While

hungry artisans revolted in urban areas, starved peasants scoured the provinces in search of food and

work. These vagrants were rumored to be armed agents of landlords hired to destroy crops and

harass the common people. Many rural peasants were gripped by a panic, known as the Great Fear.

They attacked the residences of their landlords in hopes of protecting local grain supplies and reducing

rents on their land.

Both afraid of and politically benefiting from this wave of popular violence, leaders of the revolutionary

movement in Paris began to massively restructure the state. On the night of August 4, 1789, one

nobleman after another renounced his personal privileges. Before the night was over, the National

Assembly declared an end to the feudal system, the traditional system of rights and obligations that

had reinforced inherited inequality under the Old Regime. The exact meaning of this resolution as it

applied to specific privileges, especially economic ones, took years to sort out. But it provided the

legal foundation for gradually scaling back the feudal dues peasants owed to landlords and for

eliminating the last vestiges of serfdom, the system that legally bound the peasants to live and work

on the landlords’ estates.

At the end of August, the National Assembly promulgated the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of

the Citizen. Conceived as the prologue to a new constitution that was not yet drafted, the declaration

was a short, concise document ensuring such basic personal rights as those of property, free speech,

and personal security. It left unresolved the rights of women and the limits of individual rights in

relation to the power of the newly emerging state. But by recognizing the source of sovereignty in the

people, it undermined the idea that the king ruled by divine right (see Divine Right of Kings).

A Restructuring the State

Marie-Antoinette

Marie-Antoinette was the queen of France who died on the guillotine in 1793 during the French Revolution. Her

lavish life-style made her unpopular. Paying no attention to her country’s financial crisis, she refused to make any

concessions to hungry mobs who marched on the palace in Versailles. Instead, she called out troops. Violence

followed, and she and her husband, King Louis XVI, were imprisoned by revolutionaries and later executed.

Hulton Deutsch

As these developments unfolded, Louis XVI once again failed to act decisively. The queen, Marie-

Antoinette, feared catastrophe if events continued on their current course and advocated a hard line.

But power was quickly slipping away from the king, as revolutionaries began to organize political clubs

and an influential periodical press. Having lost control of events, Louis was forced to yield to them. He

gave in so reluctantly—for example, taking months to approve the August 4, 1789, decrees and the

Declaration of Rights—that hostility to the crown only increased.

When rumors circulated that guests at a royal banquet had trampled on revolutionary insignia, a

crowd of many thousands, most of them women who were also protesting the high cost of bread,

marched to Versailles on October 5. They were accompanied by National Guards, commanded by the

Marquis de Lafayette. The Guards were barely able to prevent wholesale massacre, and the crowd

forced the royal family to leave Versailles for Paris, never to return. The king and his family were now,

in effect, prisoners, forced to inhabit the Tuilerie Palace along with the National Assembly, which

moved there as well. Paris had replaced Versailles as the center of power, and the government was

now more vulnerable than ever to the will of the restless, and occasionally violent, people of the city.

A1 Political Change: Constitutional Monarchy

The National Assembly next focused on writing a new constitution, a process that took more than two

years. Although it was agreed that France would remain a monarchy, the Assembly decided almost

immediately that the constitution would not simply reform the old order, as the more moderate

deputies wanted. Instead, it transformed the political system of the Old Regime, but preserved the

monarchy.

The new constitution was designed to prevent the return of despotism by making all government

officials subject to the rule of law. It proclaimed France as a united, sovereign kingdom, dissolved the

entire system of royal administration, and adopted a system of federalism that shifted authority from

Paris to the localities. France was divided into 83 districts called departments, each of which would

elect administrators to execute laws, maintain public order, levy taxes, and oversee education and

poor relief.

The powers of the national government were divided among separate, independent branches. The

chief executive was to be the king, who would continue to inherit his office, but his powers were to be

limited, particularly in legislative matters. The king was allowed only a suspensive veto, whereby he

could at most delay the laws passed by the assembly. As the only law-making body, the single-

chambered Legislative Assembly was the heart of the state, enjoying wide powers. Although the right

to vote was extended to more than half the adult male population—called active citizens—election to

the assembly was made a complex process. Very restrictive qualifications made only about 50,000

men (out of about 26 million French people) eligible to serve as deputies. Like the administration of

the departments, the judiciary was also decentralized. Legal procedure was streamlined, and torture

banned.

A2 Social Change: Equal Rights

In addition to reconstituting the state, the National Assembly made many changes to the existing

social order. Among the most notable changes were the elimination of the nobility as a legally defined

class and the granting of the same civil rights to all citizens; the elimination of guilds and other

organizations that monopolized production, controlled prices and wages, or obstructed economic

activity through strikes; the extension of rights to blacks in France and to mulattoes in France’s

Caribbean colonies, though not the outright abolition of slavery; and the granting of full civil rights to

religious minorities, including Protestants and Jews.

A3 Religious Change: Civil Constitution of the Clergy

Assignat

Assignats were bills issued as currency by the French revolutionary government between 1789 and 1796, backed

by the security of confiscated church and crown lands. This assignat has a denomination of 500 livres.

Sipa Press/Woodfin Camp and Associates, Inc.

Political and social restructuring on this scale raised complicated issues regarding the Catholic Church.

The clergy had enjoyed extensive property rights and special privileges under the Old Regime and had

long been a target of criticism. The National Assembly incorporated the church within the state,

stripping clerics of their property and special rights. In return, the state assumed the large debts of

the church and paid the clergy a salary. Dioceses were redrawn to correspond to departments. A

presiding bishop would administer each diocese, with local priests beneath him. Since active citizens

would elect the bishops and the priests, a Protestant, Jew, or atheist might be chosen to fill these

positions. Finally, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy of 1790 required all priests and bishops to swear

an oath of loyalty to the new order or face dismissal.

Almost half the parish priests and bishops (called the refractory clergy) refused to take the oath. This

marked an important turn of events. Before the Civil Constitution, opposition to the Revolution had

remained a scattered affair. It had been led by an ineffective group of high nobles called the émigrés,

who had fled the country beginning in July 1789 and had been conspiring from abroad ever since.

More than anything else, the Civil Constitution and the oath solidified resistance to the Revolution by

giving the resistance a religious justification and publicly designating a group of influential

individuals—the refractory clergy—as enemies of the new state.

Although there were many reasons for the Civil Constitution, financial considerations were some of the

most important. The government’s fiscal problems continued well past 1789. The assembly had

assumed the Old Regime’s debts, but tax collections had been interrupted by administrative disorders

and simple refusals to pay. To cover expenditures, the assembly issued bonds, called assignats; then

to repay the assignats, it confiscated and sold the church’s considerable property holdings. The

government justified this practice by saying that church property belonged to the nation.

B Growing Factionalism

Arrest of Louis XVI at Varennes

On June 20, 1791, King Louis XVI attempted to escape revolutionary France and flee in disguise with his family to

Austria. However, he was caught at Varennes and returned to Paris. A year later he was executed. This watercolor

(Musée Carnavalet, Paris) by Pierre-Antoine and Jean-Baptiste Lesueur depicts Louis’s arrest at Varennes.


All these measures were vigorously debated inside and outside the assembly. The assembly had been

divided from the start into a conservative right that wanted to limit change and a radical left that

wanted major social and political reforms. The assembly therefore lacked a unified voice. As head of

state, the king was expected to provide this unifying influence, even if his power was formally limited.

However, hopes that the king would step in and fill this role were dashed in June 1791 when the royal

family fled Paris in disguise, leaving behind a manifesto denouncing nearly all the Revolution had

accomplished since 1789. Poorly planned and executed, the effort ended with the royal family’s arrest

at the border town of Varennes. From there they were returned to Paris under heavy guard, now more

prisoners than ever.

Because so much had been expected of the king, the Varennes fiasco proved more of a shock than

could be absorbed all at once. In an attempt to recover, assembly leaders announced that the incident

had been a case of kidnapping, not an escape, and in mid-July the assembly voted to clear the king of

all responsibility for what had happened. But these fictions were hardly convincing, and once they

collapsed, so did the likelihood of ending the Revolution and establishing a stable government. On the

left, moderate revolutionaries who sought to keep the monarchy, called Feuillants, split from the more

radical revolutionaries, known as the Cordeliers and the Jacobins, who now began to talk openly about

replacing the monarchy with a republic.

The king reluctantly approved the new constitution on September 14, 1791. Alarmed by the radical

direction the Revolution was taking, more nobles began to cross the border to become émigrés.

Pressured by these émigrés and concerned about the potential effects of the Revolution on their own

kingdoms, the Austrian emperor and Prussian king issued the Declaration of Pillnitz on August 27. In

this declaration they announced a rather vague willingness to intervene militarily on behalf of the

French monarchy. Unclear as it was, the declaration provoked fears of an invasion.

It was under these threatening circumstances that the new constitution took effect and the Legislative

Assembly first met on October 1, 1791. At first, the assembly got along remarkably well with the king,

but this situation changed when the assembly proposed retaliatory actions against the émigrés and

the refractory clergy. On November 9 it passed legislation requiring that the émigrés return to France

or face death and the loss of their estates. On November 29 it required the refractory clergy to take

the oath to the constitution or fall under state surveillance and lose their pension rights.

V RADICAL REVOLUTION

The émigrés and their efforts to mobilize foreign powers against France created the pretext for

France’s entry into war in April 1792. In reality, Austria and Prussia had shown little interest in

intervention on behalf of the French king. However, radical political figures, most notably Jacques

Pierre Brissot, persistently exaggerated the threat of an Austrian invasion of France and the

subversion of the revolutionary government by a conspiracy of Austrian sympathizers called the

Austrian Committee. Expecting that a conflict with Austria would weaken the king to their political

advantage, Brissot and his colleagues pressed for a declaration of war. Many of the king’s advisors,

though at first not the king himself, also advocated the war option. They believed a victory would

strengthen royal power and a defeat would crush the Revolution. Persuaded, the king appointed a

ministry dominated by Brissot’s associates on March 10, 1792, and on April 20 the assembly declared

war on Austria, which was soon joined by Prussia. Thus began the series of conflicts known as the

French Revolutionary Wars.

A End of the Monarchy

Assault on the Tuileries

In 1789, during the French Revolution, King Louis XVI, his wife Marie-Antoinette, and their children were forced to

abandon the royal palace at Versailles and move to the Palace of the Tuileries in Paris. On August 10, 1792, as

conditions worsened, the people of Paris attacked the Tuileries. Louis XVI was later tried and condemned for

treason on the basis of incriminating papers the crowd found inside the palace.

Archivo Iconografico, S.A./Corbis

The wars profoundly altered the course of the Revolution, leading to the end of the monarchy and

raising fears of reprisals against the revolutionaries in the event of a defeat. The French had few

successes on the battlefield. The French army was in the middle of a major reorganization and was not

prepared for war. In addition, Brissot’s ministry proved incompetent and disorganized. During the

spring of 1792, the French army lurched from defeat to defeat. Someone, it seemed, was to blame;

and the Brissot faction (called Brissotins) blamed the king, who in turn fired the Brissotin ministers on

June 13.

On June 20 a mob, alarmed at the worsening military situation and rising bread prices caused by the

declining value of the assignats, stormed the Tuilerie Palace. Coached by the Brissotins, the mob

demanded that the king reinstate the Brissotin ministers. Louis courageously refused to do so. But

military disasters continued during the summer, and the political situation deteriorated further when a

Prussian commander, the duke of Brunswick, issued a manifesto in which he threatened to execute

anyone who harmed the royal family.

Maximilien Robespierre

Maximilien Robespierre was one of the most controversial figures in the French Revolution. In the cause of

fostering democracy, Robespierre helped bring about the Reign of Terror, in which thousands were executed by the

guillotine. He eventually met the same fate.

Hulton Deutsch

On August 10 a crowd again stormed the Tuilerie Palace in the Revolution’s bloodiest eruption to date.

This time, however, the mob was not allied with the Brissotins, who still favored a monarchy. Instead

it supported the more radical Jacobins who, under the leadership of the lawyer Maximilien

Robespierre, now demanded the creation of a republic. While the royal family hid in the Assembly hall,

the mob hacked to death some 600 Swiss guards, while itself suffering heavy losses. More than lives

were lost; so was the monarchy. The Legislative Assembly immediately suspended the king from his

duties and voted to hold a convention. The convention, to be elected by nearly universal manhood

suffrage, was to write a new, republican constitution.

B First French Republic

Georges Jacques Danton

French revolutionary leader Georges Jacques Danton won immense popularity through his powerful speeches. He

played an important part in the revolutionary government after the overthrow of the monarchy in 1792, but

became unpopular with his peers because of his conciliatory foreign policy views and was guillotined in 1794.

Library of Congress

Between August 10, 1792, and the meeting of the convention on September 20, revolutionary furor

grew. Power shifted from the Legislative Assembly, now a lame duck, to the Paris Commune. The

Commune was a city assembly made up of representatives elected from 48 neighborhood districts

called sections. Because nearly universal male suffrage had taken effect on August 10, the sections

and the Commune became increasingly dominated by the sans-culottes, a group composed mostly of

artisans and shopkeepers fiercely devoted to the Revolution and direct democracy.

In this unstable period, Georges Jacques Danton, who had probably helped organize the massacre of

August 10, became a dominating political figure. Danton, who was appointed minister of justice by the

assembly, encouraged fears that counter-revolutionary forces loyal to the king were undermining the

Revolution. He used these fears to promote further measures against counter-revolutionaries. On

August 17 a special court was created to try political suspects, but it did not convict enough

defendants to satisfy the sans-culottes.

Fearing military defeat and believing that counter-revolutionary prisoners were about to break out and

attack patriots like themselves, sans-culotte mobs attacked Parisian jails from September 2 to 7. They

murdered and mutilated more than 1000 inmates—most of whom were guilty of nothing more than

having enjoyed some privilege or committing ordinary crimes. These September Massacres were so

gruesome that no revolutionary leader, not even those with bloody agendas of their own, claimed

responsibility for them.

B1 The National Convention

Battle of Valmy

The Battle of Valmy in northeastern France on September 20, 1792, was a turning point in the French

Revolutionary Wars. The French army defeated a combined force of Austrian and Prussian invaders, thus securing

the success of the French Revolution.

Reunion des Musees nationaux, Paris/Art Resource

The National Convention first met on September 20, 1792, the same day the French army won a

major victory against Prussian forces at Valmy in northeastern France. The convention was composed

of three major political groups: the Jacobins, a fairly well disciplined radical minority; the former

Brissotins, now called Girondins, a less disciplined group of moderates; and a large group of

individuals called the Plain who were not associated with either party. On September 21 the

convention voted to establish a republic in place of the monarchy. The founding of the first French

Republic represented so important a milestone that, when the convention adopted a new revolutionary

calendar, it made September 22, 1792, the first day of Year I (see French Republican Calendar).

The convention took much longer to decide the fate of the king, who was now imprisoned with the

royal family in an old fort just outside Paris. The more moderate Girondins maneuvered to keep Louis

a prisoner. The Jacobins, who were allied with the sans-culottes, argued that the people had already

judged Louis guilty of treason when they had stormed the palace on August 10. The convention

compromised, deciding that it would try the king.

Execution by Guillotine

During the French Revolution (1789-1799), King Louis XVI of France was tried as a traitor and condemned to

death. His execution by guillotine, which took place in a crowded plaza in Paris, was a public spectacle.

Corbis

On January 15 the convention overwhelmingly found Louis guilty, and then voted (by a margin of one

vote) for immediate execution. Louis was executed on the new invention for beheading called the

guillotine on January 21, 1793, protesting his innocence. If ever there was a point of no return in the

Revolution, this was it, for enemies of the Revolution now sought to avenge the king’s death more

vigorously than they had tried to preserve his life.

Executing the king did little to solve the convention’s other problems, the main one being the war. The

convention declared war on Britain and the Netherlands in early February and on Spain in March, thus

adding to France’s military burdens. The French forces were on the defensive through most of 1793,

and in April France was stunned by the desertion of one of its chief commanders, General Dumouriez,

to the Austrians. Facing loss after loss, the convention voted to raise an army of 300,000 men. It

sought volunteers, but instituted a draft to provide additional soldiers. The draft touched off rebellion

in western rural areas, notably Brittany and the Vendée. Many people in these areas already opposed

the Revolution because of the church reorganization and the clerical oath. Pacifying them would take

years and cost an estimated 100,000 lives.

Revolts also occurred in other areas, particularly the large cities. These revolts protested the

domination of the local affairs by Paris and the Jacobins. Local elites favored federalism, a policy that

would have allowed them to maintain power over their own regions. Meanwhile, prices rose because of

a poor harvest and the declining value of the assignats, which fell to half their stated value in January

and then fell further. Higher bread prices led the sans-culottes and associated women’s groups to

demand state-imposed price controls, a demand that the Jacobins could not refuse because they

depended on the political support of the sans-culottes. In May the convention fixed maximum prices

for grain and bread.

B2 Reign of Terror

Jean-Paul Marat

Jean-Paul Marat was one of the most radical leaders of the French Revolution. He urged popular violence against

any who supported the French King Louis XVI. Stirred by his views, which he published in his newspaper, L’Ami du

Peuple, revolutionaries broke into Paris prisons and killed over 1,000 political prisoners, including priests and

aristocrats.

Hulton Deutsch

In this general crisis, revolutionary leaders began to turn on each other. The Girondins, who favored

federalism, fought a battle to the death with the Jacobins, who denounced the Girondins for lacking

revolutionary zeal and for aiding, intentionally or not, counter-revolutionary forces. The Jacobins

already dominated the convention, but on June 2, pressured by the sans-culottes, they consolidated

their power by arresting 22 Girondin leaders.

During the following months, the government put down the federalist revolts, sometimes with great

severity. A new democratic constitution was drawn up but never implemented: In Robespierre’s view,

constitutional government would have to wait until fear and repression had eliminated the enemies of

the Revolution. The Jacobins operated through the existing convention and agencies responsible to it.

They used the Committee of Public Safety, composed of 12 men led by Robespierre, to provide

executive oversight; the Committee of General Security, to oversee the police; and the Revolutionary

Tribunal to try political cases. Additionally, the Jacobins sent representatives from the convention with

wide-ranging powers to particular areas to enforce Jacobin policies.

The most urgent government business was the war. On August 17, 1793, the convention voted the

levée en masse (mass conscription), which mobilized all citizens to serve as soldiers or suppliers in the

war effort. To further that effort, the convention quickly enacted more legislation. On September 5 it

approved the Reign of Terror, a policy through which the state used violence to crush resistance to the

government. On September 9 the convention established sans-culotte paramilitary forces, the so-

called revolutionary armies, to force farmers to surrender grain demanded by the government. On

September 17 the Law of Suspects was passed, which authorized the charging of counter-

revolutionaries with vaguely defined “crimes against liberty.” On September 29 the convention

extended price-fixing from grain and bread to other essential goods and fixed wages. On December 4

the national government resumed oversight of local administration. On February 4, 1794, it abolished

slavery in the colonies.

Beyond these measures, the convention and sympathetic groups like the sans-culottes began to

create and spread a revolutionary and republican culture. These groups sponsored the use of

revolutionary and republican propaganda in the arts, public festivals, and modes of dress. In this way,

they gradually began to spread and gain acceptance for their ideals among the common people.

The most notable achievement of the Reign of Terror was to save the revolutionary government from

military defeat. The government feared invasion, which might have allowed counter-revolutionary

forces to undertake a terror of their own. To preserve the Revolution, it reorganized and strengthened

the army. The Jacobins expanded the size of the army and replaced many aristocratic officers, who

had deserted and fled abroad, with younger soldiers who had demonstrated their ability and

patriotism. The revolutionary army threw back the Austrians, Prussians, English, and Spanish during

the fall of 1793 and expelled the Austrians from Belgium by the summer of 1794.

The military success of the Jacobin-led government was undeniable. However, the repressive policies

of the Reign of Terror that enabled the government to form and equip its large army did so at the

expense of many French citizens’ security: about 250,000 people were arrested; 17,000 were tried

and guillotined, many with little if any means to defend themselves; another 12,000 were executed

without trial; and thousands more died in jail. Clergy and nobles composed only 15 percent of the

Reign of Terror’s approximately 40,000 victims. The rest were peasants and bourgeois who had fought

against the Revolution or had said or done something to offend the new order. The Reign of Terror

executed not only figures from the Old Regime, like the former queen Marie-Antoinette, but also many

revolutionary leaders. Some victims of the Reign of Terror, like Georges Danton, seemed too

moderate to Robespierre and his colleagues, while others, like the sans-culotte leader Jacques René

Hébert, seemed too extreme.

The Reign of Terror was the most radical phase of the Revolution, and it remains the most

controversial. Some have seen the Reign of Terror as a major advance toward modern democracy,

while others call it a step toward modern dictatorship. Certain defenders of the Revolution have

argued that the Reign of Terror was, under the circumstances, a reasonable response to the military

crisis of 1793. Others have rejected this idea, pointing out that the military victories of early 1794, far

from diminishing the intensity of the Reign of Terror, were followed by the Great Terror of June and

July 1794, in which more than 1300 people were executed in Paris alone. The Reign of Terror, they

have argued, resulted from an ideology already in place by 1789 that put national good above

personal rights. To this argument, others have replied that in 1789 no revolutionary leader seriously

imagined establishing anything like the Reign of Terror.

VI SEARCH FOR BALANCE

The Jacobin government lasted barely a year. Although effective in the short term, in the long run it

destroyed itself—in part because no one really controlled it. Victory on the battlefield had removed the

pretext for maintaining the Reign of Terror. At the same time, the killing frenzy of the Great Terror

convinced people—even allies of the Jacobins—they might be next on the guillotine. Furthermore, by

killing off the likes of Danton and Hébert, Robespierre’s faction had narrowed its base of support and

had no one to lean on when challenged. Thus the end was simply a matter of time.

A The Thermidorean Reaction

As it happened, the coup against Robespierre and his associates was led by a group of dissident

Jacobins, including members of the Committee of Public Safety. They had supported the Reign of

Terror but feared Robespierre would turn on them next. On July 27, 1794 (9 Thermidor, Year II, in the

revolutionary calendar), Robespierre and his close followers were arrested on the convention floor.

During the next two days, Robespierre and 82 of his associates were guillotined.

Although the conspirators of 9 Thermidor, who came to be known as Thermidoreans, could hardly

have known it, the removal of the 83 Robespierrists represented a major turning point in the

Revolution. Ever since 1789, counter-revolutionaries, who enjoyed support from many peasants, had

tried to reverse the Revolution. But it had continued to become more and more extreme in nature,

due to the increasing participation of urban radicals with whom the Jacobins had formed political

alliances. Only after 9 Thermidor did the Revolution reverse its radical direction, and more moderate

politicians came to dominate the government.

While these moderates wanted to preserve the Revolution’s achievements and tried to repress

counter-revolutionaries, they also feared and repressed the radical groups on whose backs the

Jacobins had ridden to power. In order to maintain control over both the radical left and the counter-

revolutionary right, the Thermidoreans consolidated their power and began to limit democracy. These

limitations led eventually to the dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte (see Napoleon I).

Immediately after 9 Thermidor an assortment of political groups began to use their influence to

dismantle all vestiges of the Reign of Terror. Although the convention continued in power until October

1795, the teeth of the Reign of Terror were pulled one by one. To limit their power, the committees of

Public Safety and General Security were restructured; the operations of the Revolutionary Tribunal

were curtailed; thousands of prisoners were released; and in November 1794 the Paris Jacobin club

was closed. People associated with the Reign of Terror were harassed in Paris by reactionary youth

groups known as the jeunesse d’orée (French for “the gilded youth”) and even killed in strongly

counter-revolutionary regions.

The last major popular rising of the Revolution occurred in the spring of 1795, when the near-total

devaluation of the assignats produced a price rise that devastated the poor. But this rising was put

down so effectively that the counter-revolutionaries imagined the monarchy might soon be restored,

and their activities escalated. In response, the Thermidoreans now struck against the counter-

revolutionaries, defeating and executing a group of émigré soldiers landed by the English at Quiberon

Bay in Brittany during the summer of 1795.

B The Directory

To avoid a revival of either democracy or dictatorship, the Thermidoreans put together and ratified a

new constitution that limited the right to vote to the wealthiest 30,000 male citizens and dispersed

power among three main bodies. Legislative authority was vested in two legislative assemblies, the

Council of Ancients and the Council of Five Hundred. Executive power was lodged in a five-man

Directory to be chosen by the Council of Ancients from a list of candidates presented by the Council of

Five Hundred.

Fearing the results of a true referendum, moderate republicans decreed that two-thirds of the first

legislature had to be made up of members of the former convention. As it turned out, the constitution,

which was ratified by popular vote and took effect in late October 1795, neither protected the

government from unfriendly popular forces nor prevented the concentration of power.

Did the Directory have good reason to fear that open elections would bring down the republic?

Historians have disagreed on this matter. Some argue that the Directory eventually failed because it

could not generate loyalty from either the left or the right. Other historians believe the Directory failed

because it distrusted democracy and did not develop a strong centrist party.

Whatever the reason, for the next four years the Directory lurched from making concessions to the

right and intimidating the left to making concessions to the left and intimidating the right. In May

1796 the Directory easily crushed a conspiracy of former Jacobins and agrarian radicals who intended

to seize power and redistribute property. The right triumphed at the elections in 1797 and was slowly

preparing to take power. Then in September, three members of the Directory, the triumvirate,

eliminated the two other members who had counter-revolutionary sympathies and purged the

legislature of nearly 200 opposition deputies. They did all this with the backing of the army. The

triumvirate was then joined by two new associates. This new Directory proceeded to close down

counter-revolutionary publications, exile returning émigrés and uncooperative clergy, and execute

many political opponents.

This coup of Fructidor (the month of the revolutionary calendar in which it occurred) allowed the

Directory to consolidate its power. As a result, it was able to take some bold new financial initiatives,

such as establishing a new metal-based currency and imposing a new system of taxes on luxury goods

and real estate. The coup also destroyed whatever hopes counter-revolutionaries had to gain power

through legal means.

But Fructidor also unleashed the radical left, which won an important electoral victory in May 1798. To

neutralize this threat, the Directory once again tampered with polling results by eliminating more than

100 elected left-wing deputies in what became known as the coup of Floréal. Whatever the short-term

gains for the Directory, its continuing rejection of election results stripped it of its last remaining

shreds of authority, as few could respect a regime that so routinely violated its own constitution.

C Foundations of Dictatorship

The end came in 1799. Military reverses, a domestic political crisis, and the ambitions of a military

hero, Napoleon Bonaparte, combined to give rise to the Revolution’s last major coup and the creation

of a dictatorship.

The military reverses occurred after French armies had enjoyed five years of considerable success.

Following the victories of the Reign of Terror, the first coalition of European powers fighting

revolutionary France crumbled in 1795 and 1796. Prussia, Spain, the Dutch Netherlands, and Tuscany

(Toscana) signed peace treaties with France, leaving England and Austria to fight alone. In October

1795 France annexed the Austrian Netherlands (now Belgium). The Dutch Netherlands became the

first of many so-called French sister republics. France fitted it with a new, relatively democratic

constitution closely patterned on the Directory. France also forced the Dutch Netherlands to pay it a

large indemnity. In 1796 and 1797 French armies swept into Italy and western Germany.

C1 Napoleon

Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon Bonaparte was the greatest military genius of the 19th century. He conquered most of Western Europe

and Egypt for France, while instituting reforms in these new territories aimed at guaranteeing civil liberties and

improving the quality of life. He crowned himself emperor of France in 1804 and introduced reforms intended to

unify the revolution-fractured nation. Many of Napoleon’s reforms are still in effect today.

(p) 1992 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved./G. Tomsich/Photo Researchers, Inc.

It was in the course of the Italian campaign that Napoleon Bonaparte first made himself known to the

general public. Born in 1769 to a poor but noble Corsican family, Bonaparte was trained as an artillery

officer and quickly advanced through the ranks during the early years of the Revolution. A Jacobin

associate during the Reign of Terror, Bonaparte was briefly imprisoned after Thermidor, but once

released, he made himself useful to the new Directory by crushing a counter-revolutionary uprising in

October 1795. As commander of French forces in Italy, he won a series of brilliant victories,

established a new north Italian sister republic called the Cisalpine Republic, and in October 1797

negotiated a treaty with Austria of his own design.

With a number of important secret provisions that ceded almost two-thirds of Austrian territory along

the Rhine River to France, this Treaty of Campo Formio so expanded the French sphere of influence

that it did less to create peace than to provoke a new war. Imagining themselves to be liberating

Europe, French forces proceeded to impose new political arrangements in western Germany; to

establish additional sister republics in Switzerland and Italy; to assist, unsuccessfully, an Irish revolt

against England; and to send an army under Bonaparte to Egypt to attack the Ottoman Empire.

Successful at first in Egypt, the French army was isolated after the English navy won a victory at Abū

Qīr Bay in August 1798, whereupon Bonaparte left his troops and returned to France. He was

welcomed as a great hero despite his failure to capture Egypt and his loss to the English.

C2 End of the Directory

Napoleon Seizes Power

In the coup d'etat of November 9-10, 1799, Napoleon and his colleagues seized power and established a new

regime in France—the Consulate. Under its constitution Napoleon, as first consul, had almost dictatorial powers.

The constitution was revised in 1802 to make Napoleon consul for life and in 1804 to make him emperor.


Perceiving in the French position both weakness and a continuing threat, England, Russia, the

Ottoman Empire, and Austria formed a new anti-French coalition. By the spring of 1799 the armies of

this second coalition forced France to retreat on all fronts, most dramatically in Italy where they

dislodged the French altogether and dismantled the sister republics. Although the coalition was pushed

back in September and began to disintegrate, the French military position remained uncertain.

Suddenly on the defensive and rudely reminded of their vulnerability, the French nation lost still more

respect for the Directory. Gradually during 1799 the Directory lost its political grip.

As the military situation darkened and Austria threatened France, opponents of the Directory won an

election and, for once, were able to purge the Directory, rather than vice versa. The purge enabled

newly elected deputies to take radical measures to advance the war effort. They imposed forced loans

on the wealthy and persecuted the relatives of émigrés, recalling the Reign of Terror. The primary

beneficiary of the purge, however, was Emmanuel Sieyès, who was appointed director. He began

plotting to radically revise the constitution to protect the regime from any further threats from the

radical left or the counter-revolutionary right. Needing a charismatic, popular figure to lead the

charge, Sieyès joined forces with Bonaparte.

At this point, fresh counter-revolutionary uprisings occurred in the provinces and a radical movement

to take over the republic became apparent. The plotters then persuaded members of the Directory to

resign. On November 9 (18 Brumaire) they asked the legislature to vest power in a provisional

government made up of Sieyès, Bonaparte, and Roger Ducos. When the legislature resisted, soldiers

loyal to Bonaparte chased resistors from the legislature and persuaded the remaining deputies to

approve the plan.

The Directory was dead, and with it went the last revolutionary regime that could make any pretense

to embody the liberal parliamentary government intended by the revolutionaries of 1789. Under

Bonaparte, the Revolution, if it could be said to have remained alive at all, did so in the form of a

military dictatorship that had far more power than any French king had ever possessed.

D The Ambiguous Legacy of the Revolution

At its core, the French Revolution was a political movement devoted to liberty. But what that liberty

actually was and what was required to realize it remained open questions during the Revolution, as

they have ever since. Some historians have suggested that what the revolutionaries’ liberty meant in

practice was violence and a loss of personal security that pointed to the totalitarian regimes of the

20th century. This negative view had its roots in the ideas of many counter-revolutionaries, who

criticized the Revolution from its beginning. These ideas gained new popularity during the period of

reaction that set in after Napoleon’s final defeat in 1815, when the monarchy and its counter-

revolutionary allies were restored to power.

However, the majority of Europeans and non-Europeans came to see the Revolution as much more

than a bloody tragedy. These people were more impressed by what the Revolution accomplished than

by what it failed to do. They recalled the Revolution’s abolition of serfdom, slavery, inherited privilege,

and judicial torture; its experiments with democracy; and its opening of opportunities to those who,

for reasons of social status or religion, had been traditionally excluded.

One of the most important contributions of the French Revolution was to make revolution part of the

world’s political tradition. The French Revolution continued to provide instruction for revolutionaries in

the 19th and 20th centuries, as peoples in Europe and around the world sought to realize their

different versions of freedom. Karl Marx would, at least at the outset, pattern his notion of a

proletarian revolution on the French Revolution of 1789. And 200 years later Chinese students, who

weeks before had fought their government in Tiananmen Square, confirmed the contemporary

relevance of the French Revolution when they led the revolutionary bicentennial parade in Paris on

July 14, 1989.

Along with offering lessons about liberty and democracy, the Revolution also promoted nationalism.

Napoleon’s occupation provoked nationalist groups to organize in Italy and Germany. Also influential

was the revolutionaries’ belief that a nation was not a group of royal subjects but a society of equal

citizens. The fact that most European countries are or are becoming parliamentary democracies, along

the lines set out by the French Revolution, suggests its enduring influence.

Socially, the Revolution was also important. Clearly, society in France and to a lesser extent in other

parts of Europe would never be the same. Once the ancient structure of privilege was smashed, it

could not be pieced together again. The Revolution did not fundamentally alter the distribution of

wealth, but that had not been the intention of most of the revolutionaries. Insofar as legal equality

gradually became the norm in France and Europe, the revolutionaries succeeded.

The cultural impact is harder to assess. The Revolution did not succeed in establishing the national

school system it envisioned, but it did found some of France’s elite educational institutions that have

produced some of that nation’s greatest leaders. Its attack on the church had profound repercussions,

making the status of the church a central political issue, which even today divides France politically

and culturally.

As for economic development, the Revolution probably hurt more than it helped. In the long term, the

liberation of the economy from royal controls, the standardization of weights and measures, and the

development of a uniform civil law code helped pave the way for the Industrial Revolution. But the

disruptive effects of war on the French economy offset the positive effects of these changes. In terms

of total output, the economy was probably set back a generation.

Contributed By:

Thomas E. Kaiser Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, revolutionary manifesto adopted on August 26,

1789, by the National Assembly of France and attached as the preamble to the new constitution of

1791. It was written principally by Abbé (later Count) Emmanuel Sieyès. The declaration enumerated

a number of rights with which “all men” were held to be endowed and that were described as

inalienable. In effect, this revolutionary pronouncement nullified the divine right of kings to rule, which

was the age-old basis of French government.

These inalienable rights included participation, through chosen representatives, in the making of laws;

equality of all persons before the law; equitable taxation; protection against loss of property through

arbitrary action by the state; freedom of religion, speech, and the press; and protection against

arbitrary arrest and punishment.

Historians are divided in their opinions on the political origins of the declaration. Some see in its

revolutionary pronouncements the influence of the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the bills of

rights of a number of state constitutions in the United States. Others trace the ideas embodied in the

declaration to English principles of democratic rights. Still others interpret its strong emphasis on

individual rights as an expression of the Calvinistic doctrine of freedom of conscience. A large body of

opinion holds that the declaration was a product of the current of ideas known as the Age of

Enlightenment and expounded by the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau in his Social

Contract. Marxists regard it as a statement of the basic principles of the revolutions that brought

feudalism to an end and established the capitalist system of society.

The declaration had great influence on political thought and institutions. It was a model for most of

the declarations of political and civil rights adopted by European states in the 19th century and for the

bill of rights of the constitution of the Weimar Republic of Germany (1919-33).

Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Louis XVI

Louis XVI

Louis XVI of France was the grandson of King Louis XV and was married to Marie-

Antoinette. Louis was considered a well-intentioned but weak king. A heavy tax burden

and court extravagances led eventually to a popular revolt against him and paved the way

for the French Revolution. Louis was guillotined by the revolutionary regime in 1793.

Encarta Encyclopedia Erich Lessing /Art Resource, NY

Full Size

Marie-Antoinette and her Children


French artist Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun was a favorite painter at the court of French king

Louis XVI. This portrait of Marie-Antoinette and her Children (1787, Musée du Chateau

de Versailles, France) is one of many portraits Vigée-Lebrun made of the queen. The

crown prince, Louis-Joseph, who died two years later, stands to his mother’s left.

Encarta Encyclopedia Giraudon/Art Resource, NY

Full Size



On June 20, 1791, King Louis XVI attempted to escape revolutionary France and flee in

disguise with his family to Austria. However, he was caught at Varennes and returned to

Paris. A year later he was executed. This watercolor (Musée Carnavalet, Paris) by Pierre-

Antoine and Jean-Baptiste Lesueur depicts Louis’s arrest at Varennes.

Encarta Encyclopedia Giraudon/Art Resource, NY

Full Size



In 1789, during the French Revolution, King Louis XVI, his wife Marie-Antoinette, and

their children were forced to abandon the royal palace at Versailles and move to the Palace

of the Tuileries in Paris. On August 10, 1792, as conditions worsened, the people of Paris

attacked the Tuileries. Louis XVI was later tried and condemned for treason on the basis of

incriminating papers the crowd found inside the palace.

Encarta Encyclopedia


Full Size

Louis XVI (1754-1793), king of France (1774-1792), who lost his throne in the French

Revolution and was later beheaded by the revolutionary regime.

Louis was born at Versailles on August 23, 1754, the grandson of Louis XV. The deaths of his

two elder brothers and of his father, only son of Louis XV, made the young prince the Dauphin

of France in 1765. In 1770 he married Marie-Antoinette, youngest daughter of Archduchess

Maria Theresa of Austria. On Louis’s accession, France was impoverished and burdened with

debts, and heavy taxation had resulted in widespread misery among the French people.

Immediately after he was crowned, aided by such capable statesmen as Finance Minister Anne

Robert Jacques Turgot, baron de l’Aulne, Interior Minister Chrétien Guillaume de Lamoignon de

Malesherbes, and Foreign Minister Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, Louis remitted some

of the most oppressive taxes and instituted financial and judicial reforms. Greater reforms were

prevented, however, by the opposition of the upper classes and the court. So strong was this

opposition that in 1776 Turgot was forced to resign and was replaced by financier Jacques

Necker.

After Louis granted financial aid (1778-1781) to the American colonies revolting against Great

Britain in the New World (see American Revolution), Necker proposed drastic taxes on the

nobility. He was forced to resign in 1781, and statesman Charles Alexandre de Calonne,

appointed finance minister in 1783, borrowed money for the court until 1786, when the

borrowing limit was reached. The anger of the French people against taxes and the lavish

spending of the court resulted in 1788 in the recall of Necker, who, however, could not prevent

the bankruptcy of the government. In 1788 Louis was forced to call for a meeting of the

representative governmental body called the Estates-General, the first gathering of that assembly

in 175 years. Once in session, the Estates-General assumed the powers of government. On July

14, 1789, the Parisian populace razed the Bastille, and a short time later imprisoned the king and

royal family in the palace of the Tuileries. In 1791 the royal family attempted to escape to

Austria, but they were caught and brought back to Paris. Louis swore obedience to the new

French constitution in 1791, but continued secretly to work against the revolution and to plot

intrigues with France’s enemies. In 1792, when the National Convention, the assembly of elected

French deputies, declared France a republic, the king was tried as a traitor and condemned to

death. Louis XVI was guillotined on January 21, 1793, in the Place de la Révolution (now Place

de la Concorde) in Paris.

Historians consider Louis XVI a victim of circumstances rather than a despot similar to the

former French kings Louis XIV and Louis XV. He was weak and incapable as king and not

overly intelligent. He preferred to spend his time at hobbies, such as hunting and making locks,

rather than at his duties of state, and he permitted his wife to influence him unduly.


Marie-Antoinette I INTRODUCTION

Marie-Antoinette (1755-1793), queen consort of Louis XVI of France from 1774 to 1792; her

unpopularity helped discredit the monarchy in the period before the French Revolution (1789-1799).

Like her husband, she was convicted of treason and publicly beheaded during the Revolution.

II BIRTH AND MARRIAGE


French artist Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun was a favorite painter at the court of French king Louis XVI. This portrait of

Marie-Antoinette and her Children (1787, Musée du Chateau de Versailles, France) is one of many portraits Vigée-

Lebrun made of the queen. The crown prince, Louis-Joseph, who died two years later, stands to his mother’s left.


Born in Vienna on November 2, 1755, Marie-Antoinette was one of the daughters of Holy Roman

Emperor Francis I and Empress Maria Theresa. At the age of 14 she was promised in marriage to

Louis, the heir to the French throne, and was married to him the following year, on May 16, 1770, at

Versailles. The marriage was intended to cement an alliance between the Bourbon dynasty of France

and her parents’ dynasty, the Habsburgs of Austria.

Marie-Antoinette

Marie-Antoinette was the queen of France who died on the guillotine in 1793 during the French Revolution. Her

lavish life-style made her unpopular, but she paid no attention to her country’s financial crisis, refusing to make

any concessions to hungry mobs who marched on the palace in Versailles. Instead, she called out troops. Violence

followed, and she and her husband, King Louis XVI, were imprisoned by revolutionaries and later executed.

Hulton Deutsch

Vivacious and beautiful, Marie-Antoinette was received approvingly by her young husband and his

grandfather, Louis XV, on her arrival at the French court. However, her husband, a plodding, bashful

youth, at first appeared indifferent to her, and her natural vitality found expression in gaiety and

extravagance. When her husband assumed the throne in 1774, Marie-Antoinette became queen of

France. In 1778, a daughter was born. Two sons and another daughter followed.

III AN UNPOPULAR QUEEN

Even before she became queen Marie-Antoinette made herself unpopular. Her disregard of French

etiquette, her impetuous conduct, and her rumored infidelities made her the subject of court intrigues

and dislike. Before long she was contemptuously referred to as “l’Autrichienne” (“the Austrian”) and

began to find disfavor with the French people generally. As queen she made herself more unpopular

by her devotion to the interests of Austria and the bad reputations of some of her friends. She

strongly influenced the king in his conduct of state affairs, and her choice of ministers was unwise. Her

extravagance was mistakenly blamed for the financial problems of the French government and for the

simultaneous poverty and suffering of the French people. Also damaging was her supposed connection

with the so-called Diamond Necklace affair, a scandal in 1785 involving the fraudulent purchase of

some jewels. As the revolution neared, Marie Antoinette became the symbolic object of popular hatred

for the French government.

IV FALL OF MARIE-ANTOINETTE AND THE MONARCHY


In 1789, during the French Revolution, King Louis XVI, his wife Marie-Antoinette, and their children were forced to

abandon the royal palace at Versailles and move to the Palace of the Tuileries in Paris. On August 10, 1792, as

conditions worsened, the people of Paris attacked the Tuileries. Louis XVI and Marie were later tried for treason and

condemned to death.


After the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789, Marie-Antoinette sided with the intransigents at court

who opposed any compromise with the moderate revolutionaries. Raised to believe in the absolute

power of the monarchy, she opposed even the idea of a limited, constitutional monarchy. However,

she sensed that the regime was doomed after a crowd marched on Versailles in October 1789 and the

royal family was forced to move to the Palace of the Tuileries in Paris.

Through secret envoys Marie-Antoinette appealed to her brother, Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II, to

send an Austrian army to rescue them. When no help seemed forthcoming after two years, she

determined to flee France. Although Louis protested, she won him over. On the night of June 20,

1791, disguised as ordinary travelers, Marie and Louis fled Paris by coach with their surviving son.

They were captured at Varennes and brought back to Paris as prisoners. Hostility toward the

monarchy increased after their flight.

On August 10, 1792, a mob stormed the Tuileries, and the royal family was removed and imprisoned.

Louis was later convicted of treason and was executed by guillotine on January 21, 1793. Two

attempts were made to rescue Marie while she was in prison, but on October 14, 1793, she was sent

before the revolutionary tribunal and also was sentenced to death for treason. She was put to death

on the guillotine in Paris on October 16, 1793.


Napoleon I I INTRODUCTION

Napoleon Bonaparte






Napoleon I (1769-1821), emperor of the French, whose imperial dictatorship ended the French

Revolution (1789-1799) while consolidating the reforms it had brought about. One of the greatest

military commanders of all time, he conquered much of Europe.

Napoleon was born on August 15, 1769, in Ajaccio, Corsica, and was given the name Napoleone (in

French his name became Napoleon Bonaparte). He was the second of eight children of Carlo (Charles)

Buonaparte and Letizia Ramolino Buonaparte, both of the Corsican-Italian gentry. No Buonaparte had

ever been a professional soldier. Carlo was a lawyer who had fought for Corsican independence, but

after the French occupied the island in 1768, he served as a prosecutor and judge and entered the

French aristocracy as a count. Through his father’s influence, Napoleon was educated at the expense

of King Louis XVI, at Brienne and the École Militaire, in Paris. Napoleon graduated in 1785, at the age

of 16, and joined the artillery as a second lieutenant.

After the Revolution began in 1789, Napoleon became a lieutenant colonel (1791) in the Corsican

National Guard. In 1793, however, Corsica declared independence, and Bonaparte, a French patriot

and a Republican, fled to France with his family. He was assigned, as a captain, to an army besieging

Toulon, a naval base that, aided by a British fleet, was in revolt against the republic. Replacing a

wounded artillery general, he seized ground where his guns could drive the British fleet from the

harbor, and Toulon fell. As a result Bonaparte was promoted to brigadier general at the age of 24. In

1795 he saved the revolutionary government by dispersing an insurgent mob in Paris. In 1796 he

married Joséphine de Beauharnais, the widow of an aristocrat guillotined in the Revolution and the

mother of two children.

II EARLY CAMPAIGNS

Battle of the Pyramids, 21 July 1798

In the Battle of the Pyramids on July 21, 1798, the armies of Napoleon defeated Mameluke forces in Egypt.

Napoleon had already conquered Alexandria and a few days later entered Cairo. However, British admiral Horatio

Nelson won a decisive naval victory over Napoleon in the Battle of the Nile on August 1 and 2, 1798, ending

Napoleon's dreams of an eastern empire. The painting Battle of the Pyramids, 21 July 1798 (1806) by Louis-

François Lejeune is at Versailles Palace in France.


Bonaparte was made commander of the French army in Italy in 1796. He defeated four Austrian

generals in succession, each with superior numbers, and forced Austria and its allies to make peace.

The Treaty of Campo Formio provided that France keep most of its conquests. In northern Italy he

founded the Cisalpine Republic (later known as the kingdom of Italy) and strengthened his position in

France by sending millions of francs worth of treasure to the government.

In 1798, to strike at British trade with the East, Napoleon led an expedition to Ottoman-ruled Egypt,

which he conquered. His fleet, however, was destroyed by British admiral Horatio Nelson in the Battle

of the Nile, leaving him stranded. Undaunted, Napoleon reformed the Egyptian government and law,

abolishing serfdom and feudalism and guaranteeing basic rights. The French scholars he had brought

with him began the scientific study of ancient Egyptian history. In 1799 he failed to capture Syria, but

he won a smashing victory over the Ottomans at Abū Qīr (Abukir). France, meanwhile, faced a new

coalition; Austria, Russia, and lesser powers had allied with Britain.

III NAPOLEONIC RULE IN FRANCE

Napoleon Seizes Power

In the coup d'etat of November 9-10, 1799, Napoleon and his colleagues seized power and established a new

regime in France—the Consulate. Under its constitution Napoleon, as first consul, had almost dictatorial powers.

The constitution was revised in 1802 to make Napoleon consul for life and in 1804 to make him emperor.


Bonaparte, no modest soul, decided to leave his army and return to save France. In Paris, he joined a

conspiracy against the government. In the coup d’etat of November 9-10, 1799 (18-19 Brumaire), he

and his colleagues seized power and established a new regime—the Consulate. Under its constitution,

Bonaparte, as first consul, had almost dictatorial powers. The constitution was revised in 1802 to

make Bonaparte consul for life and in 1804 to create him emperor. Each change received the

overwhelming assent of the electorate.

In 1800, Napoleon assured his power by crossing the Alps and defeating the Austrians at Marengo. He

then negotiated a general European peace that established the Rhine River as the eastern border of

France. He also concluded an agreement with the pope (the Concordat of 1801), which contributed to

French domestic tranquility by ending the quarrel with the Roman Catholic Church that had arisen

during the French Revolution.

In France the administration was reorganized, the court system was simplified, and all schools were

put under centralized control. French law was standardized in the Code Napoléon, or civil code, and six

other codes. They guaranteed the rights and liberties won in the Revolution, including equality before

the law and freedom of religion.

IV WARS OF CONQUEST

Battle of Austerlitz

One of Napoleon’s greatest military victories took place near the village of Austerlitz (now Slavkov in the Czech

Republic) on December 2, 1805. The French force was victorious against a much larger combined force of Austrian

and Russian troops.


In April 1803 Britain, provoked by Napoleon’s aggressive behavior, resumed war with France on the

seas; two years later Russia and Austria joined the British in a new coalition. Napoleon then

abandoned plans to invade England and turned his armies against the Austro-Russian forces,

defeating them at the Battle of Austerlitz on December 2, 1805. In 1806 he seized the kingdom of

Naples and made his elder brother Joseph Bonaparte king, converted the Dutch Republic into the

kingdom of Holland for his brother Louis, and established the Confederation of the Rhine (most of the

German states) of which he was protector. Prussia then allied itself with Russia and attacked the

confederation. Napoleon destroyed the Prussian army at Jena and Auerstädt (1806) and the Russian

army at Friedland. At Tilsit (July 1807), Napoleon made an ally of Russian tsar Alexander I and greatly

reduced the size of Prussia (see Tilsit, Treaty of). He also added new states to the empire: the

kingdom of Westphalia, under his brother Jérôme, the duchy of Warsaw, and others.

Napoleon had meanwhile established the Continental System, a French-imposed blockade of Europe

against British goods, designed to bankrupt what he called the “nation of shopkeepers.” In 1807

Napoleon seized Portugal. In 1808, he made his brother Joseph king of Spain, awarding Naples to his

brother-in-law, Joachim Murat. Joseph’s arrival in Spain touched off a rebellion there, which became

known as the Peninsular War. Napoleon appeared briefly and scored victories, but after his departure

the fighting continued for five years, with the British backing Spanish armies and guerrillas. The

Peninsular War cost France 300,000 casualties and untold sums of money and contributed to the

eventual weakening of the Napoleonic empire.

In 1809 Napoleon beat the Austrians again at Wagram, annexed the Illyrian Provinces (now part of

Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Montenegro), and abolished the Papal States.

He also divorced Joséphine, and in 1810 he married the Habsburg archduchess Marie Louise, daughter

of the Austrian emperor. By thus linking his dynasty with the oldest ruling house in Europe, he hoped

that his son, who was born in 1811, would be more readily accepted by established monarchs. In

1810 also, the empire reached its widest extension with the annexation of Bremen, Lübeck, and other

parts of north Germany, together with the entire kingdom of Holland, following the forced abdication

of Louis Bonaparte.

V NAPOLEONIC RULE IN EUROPE

Empire of Napoleon I

Napoleon I, emperor of the French, controlled much of Europe, from Spain to Poland, by 1810. In 1812, however,

he undertook a disastrous invasion of Russia, and afterward his empire began to fall apart.

© Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

In all the new kingdoms created by the emperor, the Code Napoléon was established as law.

Feudalism and serfdom were abolished, and freedom of religion established (except in Spain). Each

state was granted a constitution, providing for universal male suffrage (voting rights) and a

parliament and containing a bill of rights. French-style administrative and judicial systems were

required. Schools were put under centralized administration, and free public schools were envisioned.

Higher education was opened to all who qualified, regardless of class or religion. Every state had an

academy or institute for the promotion of the arts and sciences. Incomes were provided for eminent

scholars, especially scientists. Constitutional government remained only a promise, but progress and

increased efficiency were widely realized. Not until after Napoleon’s fall did the common people of

Europe, alienated from his governments by war taxes and military conscription, fully appreciate the

benefits he had given them.

VI NAPOLEON’S DOWNFALL

Retreat from Russia

In 1812 Napoleon invaded Russia and by September his forces occupied Moscow. The Russian tsar ordered the city

burned so there would be no winter quarters for the French troops. In October the French retreat from Moscow

began. The troops suffered from hunger, cold, and constant attack, and many died during the retreat.


In 1812 Napoleon, whose alliance with Alexander I had disintegrated, launched an invasion of Russia

that ended in a disastrous retreat from Moscow. Thereafter all Europe united against him, and

although he fought on, and brilliantly, the odds were impossible. In April 1814, his marshals refused

to continue the struggle. After the allies had rejected his stepping down in favor of his son, Napoleon

abdicated unconditionally and was exiled to the Mediterranean island of Elba. Marie Louise and his son

were put in the custody of her father, the emperor of Austria. Napoleon never saw either of them

again. Napoleon himself, however, soon made a dramatic comeback.

In March 1815, Napoleon escaped from Elba, reached France, and marched on Paris, winning over the

troops sent to capture him. In Paris, he promulgated a new and more democratic constitution, and

veterans of his old campaigns flocked to his support. Napoleon asked peace of the allies, but they

outlawed him, and he decided to strike first. The result was a campaign into Belgium, which ended in

defeat at the Battle of Waterloo on June 18, 1815. In Paris, crowds begged him to fight on, but the

politicians withdrew their support. Napoleon fled to Rochefort, where he surrendered to the captain of

the British battleship Bellerophon. He was then exiled to Saint Helena, a remote island in the south

Atlantic Ocean, where he remained until his death on May 5, 1821.

VII THE NAPOLEONIC LEGEND

The cult of Napoleon as the “man of destiny” began during his lifetime. In fact, he had begun to

cultivate it during his first Italian campaign by systematically publicizing his victories. As first consul

and emperor, he had engaged the best writers and artists of France and Europe to glorify his deeds

and had contributed to the cult himself by the elaborate ceremonies with which he celebrated his rule,

picturing himself as the architect of France’s greatest glory. He maintained that he had preserved the

achievements of the Revolution in France and offered their benefits to Europe. His goal, he said, was

to found a European state—a “federation of free peoples.” Whatever the truth of this, he became the

arch-hero of the French and a martyr to the world. In 1840 his remains were returned to Paris at the

request of King Louis Philippe and interred with great pomp and ceremony in the Invalides, where

they still lie.

VIII EVALUATION

Arc de Triomphe, Paris

In 1806 Napoleon Bonaparte, the emperor of France, commissioned the construction of the Arc de Triomphe as a

monument to his victories. The Arc de Triomphe stands 50 m (164 ft) tall and 45 m (147 ft) wide at the western

end of the Champs-Élysées in Paris. The inner walls of the arch bear the names of many of Napoleon’s generals

and military victories.

Hi Pix

Napoleon’s influence is evident in France even today. Reminders of him dot Paris—the most obvious

being the Arc de Triomphe, the centerpiece of the city, which was built to commemorate his victories.

His spirit pervades the constitution of the Fifth Republic; the country’s basic law is still the Code

Napoléon, and the administrative and judicial systems are essentially Napoleonic. A uniform state-

regulated system of education persists. Napoleon’s radical reforms in all parts of Europe cultivated the

ground for the revolutions of the 19th century. Today, the impact of the Code Napoléon is apparent in

the law of all European countries.

Napoleon was a driven man, never secure, never satisfied. “Power is my mistress,” he said. His life

was work-centered; even his social activities had a purpose. He could bear amusements or vacations

only briefly. His tastes were for coarse food, bad wine, cheap snuff. He could be charming—

hypnotically so—for a purpose. He had intense loyalties—to his family and old associates. Nothing and

no one, however, were allowed to interfere with his work.

Napoleon was sometimes a tyrant and always an authoritarian, but one who believed in ruling by

mandate of the people, expressed in plebiscites. He was also a great enlightened monarch—a civil

executive of enormous capacity who changed French institutions and tried to reform the institutions of

Europe and give the Continent a common law. Few deny that he was a military genius. At Saint

Helena, he said, “Waterloo will erase the memory of all my victories.” He was wrong; for better or

worse, he is best remembered as a general, not for his enlightened government, but the latter must

be counted if he is justly to be called Napoleon the Great.

See French Revolution; Napoleonic Wars. See also separate articles on individual battles mentioned.

Contributed By:

Owen Connelly Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Napoleonic Wars I INTRODUCTION

Napoleon Bonaparte






Napoleonic Wars, series of wars fought between France and a number of European nations from 1799

to 1815. In 1799 France came under the domination of Napoleon Bonaparte, who later became

Napoleon I, emperor of France, in 1804. The Napoleonic Wars were a continuation of the wars of the

French Revolution (1789-1799), in which the Habsburgs and other dynastic rulers of Europe combined

in an effort to overthrow the revolutionary government of France and restore the rule of the French

monarchy.

II FIRST COALITION

Battle of the Pyramids

French artist Antoine-Jean Gros painted many action-filled historical scenes featuring Napoleon I, such as Battle of

the Pyramids. Painted in 1810, it is at the Palace of Versailles outside Paris, in France.


In the War of the First Coalition (1793-1797), France fought against an alliance consisting of Austria,

Prussia, Great Britain, Spain, the Netherlands, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. In 1796 Napoleon was

entrusted by the government of France, the Directory, with conducting military operations against

Austrian forces in northern Italy. In less than a year, Napoleon had led his troops to victory over the

larger Austrian army. In 1798, he was made the leader of an expedition to conquer Egypt as a base

for future attack against the British possession of India. The invasion was ultimately unsuccessful, and

Napoleon returned to France. Although the two campaigns took place before Napoleon's government,

the Consulate, was established, they are generally regarded as the opening phases of the Napoleonic

Wars. The campaigns were the first in which Napoleon displayed on a large scale his genius as a

commander; early battles of the War of the Second Coalition are also included in this category.

III SECOND COALITION

Battle of the Pyramids, 21 July 1798

In the Battle of the Pyramids on July 21, 1798, the armies of Napoleon defeated Mameluke forces in Egypt.

Napoleon had already conquered Alexandria and a few days later entered Cairo. However, British admiral Horatio

Nelson won a decisive naval victory over Napoleon in the Battle of the Nile on August 1 and 2, 1798, ending

Napoleon's dreams of an eastern empire. The painting Battle of the Pyramids, 21 July 1798 (1806) by Louis-

François Lejeune is at Versailles Palace in France.


Napoleon's success against Austria in his northern Italian campaign had put an end to the First

Coalition. During his absence in Egypt, however, a new alliance known as the Second Coalition was

formed on December 24, 1798. The alliance was composed of Russia, Great Britain, Austria, the

kingdom of Naples (see Sicily: History), Portugal, and the Ottoman Empire. The principal fighting of

the War of the Second Coalition, which broke out at the end of 1798, took place during the following

year in northern Italy and in Switzerland. The Austrians and Russians, under the leadership chiefly of

the noted Russian general Count Aleksandr Suvorov, were uniformly successful against the French in

northern Italy. They defeated the French in the battles of Magnano (April 5, 1799), Cassano (April 27),

the Trebbia (June 17-19), and Novi (August 15). The coalition also captured Milan; put an end to the

Cisalpine Republic, which had been formed under French auspices in 1797; occupied Turin; and in

general deprived the French of their previous victories in Italy. In Switzerland, matters went better for

the French. After a defeat at Zürich (June 4-7) by Charles Louis John, archduke of Austria, French

forces under General André Masséna defeated a Russian army under General Alexander Korsakov on

September 26. The victorious Suvorov led his forces from northern Italy across the Alps to join those

of Korsakov in Switzerland. He found Korsakov's forces already defeated and scattered; Suvorov was

forced by the French to take refuge in the mountains of the canton of Grisons, where, during the early

fall, his army was practically destroyed by cold and starvation. On October 22, alleging lack of

cooperation by the Austrians, the Russians withdrew from the Second Coalition.

After Napoleon returned to France from Egypt in October 1799, he became leader of the Consulate

and offered to make peace with the allies. The Coalition refused, and Napoleon planned a series of

moves against Austria, and various German states in alliance with Austria, for the spring of 1800.

Napoleon crossed the Alps into northern Italy with a newly raised army of 40,000 men and on June 14

defeated the Austrians in the Battle of Marengo. In the meantime French forces under General Jean

Victor Moreau had crossed the Rhine into southern Germany and taken Munich. Moreau had also

defeated the Austrians under Archduke John of Austria in the Battle of Hohenlinden in Bavaria on

December 3, and had advanced to the city of Linz, Austria. These and other French successes caused

Austria to capitulate. On February 9, 1801, by the Treaty of Lunéville, Austria and its German allies

ceded the left bank of the Rhine River to France, recognized the Batavian, Helvetian, Cisalpine, and

Ligurian republics, and made other concessions. The Treaty of Lunéville also marked the breakup of

the Second Coalition. The only allied nation that continued fighting was Great Britain. British troops

had unsuccessfully engaged the French on Dutch soil in 1799, but had made some territorial gains at

the expense of France in Asia and elsewhere. On March 27, 1802, Britain made peace with France

through the Treaty of Amiens.

This peace, however, turned out to be a mere truce. In 1803 a dispute arose between the two nations

because of the treaty provision that Britain return the island of Malta to its original possessors, the

Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem. The people of Malta preferred the British crown, and the British did

not surrender the island, so war again broke out between Britain and France. An important

consequence of this war was Napoleon's abandonment, because of the need to concentrate his

resources in Europe, of his plan to establish a great French colonial empire in the region known as

Louisiana in North America. Instead, he sold Louisiana to the United States. In 1805 Britain was joined

in its new war by Austria, Russia, and Sweden, and Spain allied itself to France. The ensuing war is

known as the War of the Third Coalition.

IV THIRD COALITION

Napoleon quickly moved against the new alliance. Since 1798 he had exerted pressure on Britain by

keeping an army concentrated at Boulogne on the English Channel, ostensibly preparing to invade

England. During the dissensions leading to the outbreak of war in 1803, Napoleon had greatly

increased the French forces at Boulogne. After the formation of the Third Coalition against France, he

moved his troops from Boulogne to meet the Austrians, who, under Ferdinand III, grand duke of

Tuscany (Toscana), and General Karl Mack von Leiberich, had invaded Bavaria. A number of German

states, including Bavaria, Württemberg, and Baden, allied themselves with France. Napoleon defeated

the Austrians at Ulm, taking 23,000 prisoners, and then marched his troops along the Danube River

and captured Vienna. Russian armies under General Mikhail Ilarionovich Kutuzov and Alexander I,

emperor of Russia, reinforced the Austrians, but Napoleon crushed the combined Austro-Russian

forces in the Battle of Austerlitz, sometimes known as the Battle of the Three Emperors. Austria again

capitulated, signing the Treaty of Pressburg on December 26, 1805. Among the terms of this treaty

was the concession by Austria to France of territory in northern Italy and to Bavaria of territory in

Austria itself; in addition, Austria recognized the duchies of Württemberg and Baden as kingdoms.

V CONFEDERATION OF THE RHINE

Horatio Nelson

British naval commander Horatio Nelson gained fame and the gratitude of his country when he destroyed a

combined French and Spanish fleet led by Napoleon that was prepared to invade England.

Corbis

In Italy, where French forces under Masséna had defeated the Austrians under Charles Louis John,

Napoleon made his elder brother, Joseph Bonaparte, king of Naples in 1806. Elsewhere in Europe, he

made his third brother, Louis Bonaparte, king of Holland (the former Batavian Republic); and on July

12 he established the Confederation of the Rhine, which eventually consisted of all the states of

Germany except Austria, Prussia, Brunswick, and Hessen. The formation of the Confederation put an

end to the Holy Roman Empire and brought most of Germany under Napoleon's control. His

continental successes, however, were largely offset by the victory on October 21, 1805, off Cape

Trafalgar, of the British under Admiral Horatio Nelson over the combined fleets of France and Spain.

This victory gave Britain mastery of the sea throughout the remainder of the Napoleonic era. In 1806

economic warfare between Britain and France was initiated. Napoleon formulated his so-called

Continental System, issuing decrees, in 1806 and later, forbidding British trade with all European

nations. Britain retaliated with the Orders of Council, which in effect prohibited neutrals from trading

between the ports of any nations obeying Napoleon's decrees. British mastery of the sea made it

difficult for Napoleon to enforce the Continental System and resulted eventually in the failure of his

economic policy for Europe.

VI FOURTH COALITION

Battle of Eylau

French painter Baron Antoine-Jean Gros is best known for his many works that chronicle the career of Napoleon I.

The scene of the Battle of Eylau (1808) is located in the Louvre museum in Paris, France. His most popular works

display the grandiosity and emotion of romanticism, an artistic movement of the early 19th century.


Before the effect of British sea power could be manifest, however, Napoleon increased his power over

the Continent. In 1806 Prussia, aroused by Napoleon's growing strength in Germany, joined in a

Fourth Coalition with Britain, Russia, and Sweden. Napoleon badly defeated the Prussians in the Battle

of Jena on October 14, 1806, and captured Berlin. He then defeated the Russians in the Battle of

Friedland and forced Alexander I to make peace. By the principal terms of the Treaty of Tilsit, Russia

gave up its Polish possessions and became an ally of France, and Prussia was reduced to the status of

a third-rate power, deprived of almost half its territory and crippled by heavy indemnity payments and

severe restrictions on the size of its standing army. Through military action against Sweden on the

part of Russia and Denmark, Gustav IV Adolph of Sweden was forced to abdicate in favor of his uncle,

Charles XIII, on the condition that the latter name as his heir General Jean Baptiste Jules Bernadotte,

one of Napoleon's marshals. Bernadotte became king in 1818, as Charles XIV John, founding the

present royal line.

VII ANTI-NAPOLEONIC NATIONALISM

Second of May, 1808

Spanish painter Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes witnessed the horrors of war firsthand when Napoleon invaded

Spain and deposed King Charles IV. In Goya's painting Second of May, 1808, French soldiers attack Spanish

civilians in Madrid. Created in 1814, the work is located in Madrid’s Museo del Prado.

The Prado Museum, Madrid/Archivo Fotografico Oronoz

In 1808 Napoleon was master of all Europe except Russia and Britain, but from this time on his power

began to decline. The chief reasons for this decline were the rise of a nationalistic spirit in the various

defeated nations of Europe and the persistent opposition of Britain, which, safe from invasion because

of its superior navy, never ceased to organize and subsidize new coalitions against Napoleon.

In Spain, Napoleon first encountered the nationalistic spirit that led to his downfall. In 1808, after

dethroning King Charles IV of Spain, Napoleon made his brother Joseph Bonaparte king of the

country. The Spanish revolted and drove Joseph out of Madrid. A violent struggle known as the

Peninsular War (1808-1814) then took place between the French, intent on restoring Joseph as king,

and the Spaniards, aided by British forces under Arthur Wellesley, 1st duke of Wellington. The French

were eventually defeated, suffering losses in manpower that severely handicapped Napoleon when he

was later forced to meet new enemies in the east and north of Europe. The first of these new enemies

was Austria, which, inflamed by patriotic feeling, entered the Fifth Coalition, with Britain, in 1809.

Napoleon defeated the Austrians at Wagram (July 1809), and inflicted on them the Treaty of

Schönbrunn, by which Austria lost Salzburg, part of Galicia, and a large part of its southern European

territory. He also divorced his first wife and married Marie Louise, the daughter of Francis II, of Austria

in the vain hope of keeping Austria out of further coalitions against him.

VIII DEFEAT OF NAPOLEON

Retreat from Russia

In 1812 Napoleon invaded Russia and by September his forces occupied Moscow. The Russian tsar ordered the city

burned so there would be no winter quarters for the French troops. In October the French retreat from Moscow

began. The troops suffered from hunger, cold, and constant attack, and many died during the retreat.


The turning point of Napoleon's career came in 1812, when war again broke out between France and

Russia because of Alexander's refusal to enforce the Continental System. With one large army already

tied down by the “Spanish ulcer,” Napoleon invaded Russia with an army of 500,000. He defeated the

Russians at Borodino and took Moscow on September 14, 1812. The Russians burned the city, making

it impossible for Napoleon's troops to establish winter quarters there. The French retreated across

Russia into Germany, suffering the loss of most of their men through cold, starvation, and Russian

guerrilla attacks. Russia then joined the Fifth Coalition, which also included Prussia, Britain, and

Sweden. In 1813, in a burst of patriotic fervor caused by the political and economic reforms that had

taken place since its defeat at Jena, Prussia opened the War of Liberation against Napoleon. He

defeated the Prussians at Lützen and Bautzen and achieved his last important victory at the Battle of

Dresden, where on August 27, 1813, a French force of about 100,000 defeated a combined Austrian,

Prussian, and Russian force of about 150,000. The following October, however, Napoleon was forced

by the Battle of Leipzig to retreat across the Rhine, thus freeing Germany. The following year the

Russians, Austrians, and Prussians invaded France from the north. In March 1814 they took Paris,

whereupon Napoleon abdicated and was sent into exile on the island of Elba in the Mediterranean Sea.

The members of the Fifth Coalition assembled at the Congress of Vienna to restore in Europe the

monarchies Napoleon had overthrown. During their deliberations Napoleon escaped from Elba to

France, quickly raised an army, and marched into Belgium to meet the forces of Britain, Prussia,

Russia, and Austria. He defeated his enemies at Ligny, but was defeated by them at Quatre-Bras.

Napoleon met final defeat on June 18, 1815, at the Battle of Waterloo, which marked the end of the

Napoleonic Wars.

IX CONCLUSION

Initially the Napoleonic Wars perpetuated the ideological conflict between revolutionary France and

monarchical Europe. At some point, however, the elusive ambitions of Napoleon himself became their

principal and consistent cause. The wars, moreover, bore Napoleon's personal stamp because he

personally determined strategy and commanded the French armies. His ever-broadening diplomatic

ambitions were matched by his military strategy, a bold style of taking calculated risks. This style in

turn reflected the strength of the French army; its tactics, organization, equipment, and morale had all

improved during the French Revolution, and it was led by talented field generals who had risen from

the ranks. Napoleon's genius as a commander was his ability to move rapidly, thus gaining an

important element of surprise over his opponents. His major failings were matters of attitude rather

than technique. In general he underestimated his enemies, perhaps because of his early one-sided

victories. In Spain and Russia he was further hampered by his insensitivity to national spirit and by his

belief that seizure of a capital city such as Madrid or Moscow would lead his opponent to capitulate.

Most important in its impact on the nature and frequency of these wars was Napoleon's utter

disregard for the cost of his campaigns in bloodshed and lives.

Contributed By:

Isser Woloch Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Thematic Essay: Political and Social Thought of the Enlightenment I INTRODUCTION

Thematic Essay: Political and Social Thought of the Enlightenment

Thematic Essays combine a broad survey of a particular topic with key supplementary readings to

create a comprehensive learning experience. This essay by historian Isaac Kramnick traces the

cultural and political factors that led to the development of the Enlightenment. Accompanying the

essay are Sidebars consisting of excerpts from the works of some of the movement’s most influential

thinkers.

By Isaac Kramnick

The Enlightenment was a philosophical movement based on the belief that science and human reason

can triumph over political and religious tyranny. An intellectual spirit that knew no national

boundaries, it drew proponents from America, England, France, Germany, Italy, Scotland, Spain, and

Russia.

Although its advocates were widespread, 18th-century French thought is usually regarded as best

embodying the principles of the Enlightenment, particularly the writings of Denis Diderot, Charles

Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, and others. Known by their French label the

philosophes, these writers helped define Enlightenment philosophy by publishing their magisterial, 17-

volume collaboration, the Encyclopédie (1751-1772). This work was designed as a catalog of all

human understanding, containing an exhaustive range of definitive articles on science, the arts,

history, and philosophy. The writers expressed unorthodox views in this work, arguing that science

and reason could triumph over the blindness of religion and tradition. Although these views caused

French royalty and the clergy to condemn the book and persecute its authors, they served to

introduce and declare Enlightenment principles.

The philosophes regarded three Englishmen as the prophets of the Enlightenment; thus, they

dedicated their Encyclopédie to Francis Bacon, John Locke, and Isaac Newton. American statesman

Thomas Jefferson, a disciple of the Enlightenment, agreed with this assessment, ordering for his

library in 1789 a composite portrait of the same three men. They had, he wrote to a friend, laid the

foundation for the physical and moral sciences of modernity and were “the three greatest men that

have ever lived, without any exception.”

II HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL SETTING

To set a precise date on an intellectual movement is impossible, but most important events of the

Enlightenment took place during the 100-plus years from the 1680s to the 1790s. The movement’s

beginnings were marked in Great Britain by the Glorious Revolution of 1688. This bloodless overthrow

of King James II provided a constitutional arrangement that effectively abolished the line of Stuart

monarchs and ushered in religious tolerance and a strengthened Parliament. The dawn of

Enlightenment thinking in Great Britain was heralded by two publications. The first was published in

1687, Newton’s Principia, which used mathematics to explain observed phenomena such as

gravitation. The second, Locke’s “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” (1690), emphasized

formulating ideas through experience.

Two milestones signal the beginnings of the movement in France. First, in 1685 King Louis XIV

revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had granted limited tolerance to French Protestants in 1598. The

second milestone was the writings in the late 1680s of religious skeptic Pierre Bayle and scientist

Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle. Both authors questioned the prevailing religious attitudes in styles

that would become characteristic of the Enlightenment movement.

The end of the Enlightenment is best linked to the realization of its ideals, which occurred in the

revolutionary fervor that swept through America and France in the last quarter of the 18th century.

These ideals, in turn, gave rise to a move toward romanticism in art and literature. It also provided

the basis for the political liberalism and spirit of reform that spread throughout the 19th-century

Western world.

The events of the 1680s provide glaring evidence of the different settings for Enlightenment thought

in France and Britain. Religious tolerance and freedom of publication generally flourished in the liberal

atmosphere of Augustan England. This period, characterized by literary grandeur under the restored

monarch Charles II, earned its name for its resemblance to imperial Rome under Augustus. In France,

on the other hand, Louis XIV dealt a ringing blow to religious tolerance in 1685 when he revoked the

Edict of Nantes. The revocation ushered in a century of oppressive and absolute rule in France, with

first the persecution and then the flight of the French Protestants, known as Huguenots. Further, royal

and clerical control and censorship of publications led to the arrest of Voltaire and other writers.

Before long, the works of Diderot, Montesquieu, Claude Helvétius, and Paul Henri d'Holbach were

condemned and suppressed. Finally, the Encyclopédie itself was banned in 1759.

III POLITICAL THOUGHT OF THE FRENCH ENLIGHTENMENT

Montesquieu and Diderot, attempting to avoid suppression, often invented fictional foreigners whose

observations criticized French political institutions and the Catholic Church. The harsher realities of

repression and persecution lent the political writings of the French Enlightenment a tone that is more

bitter and less compromising than that of the British. Not that despotism, when freed from religious

zeal, was utterly incompatible with the French Enlightenment. Several of the philosophes, including

Voltaire, Diderot, and Helvétius, envisioned the political ideal as an “enlightened despot,” a reforming

monarch. Their ideal monarch was personified by Frederick II of Prussia and Catherine II of Russia.

The “enlightened despot,” while sponsoring religious tolerance, was committed to rational reform of

the political, legal, and economic aspects of an age of reason. Examples of such reforms include

Frederick introducing new agriculture and manufacturing methods, and Catherine attempting to

modernize Russian law by establishing a legislative commission.

Political differences notwithstanding, the intellectuals of the French and British Enlightenment operated

in relatively similar social settings. They shared the profound transformation of Western life brought

by commerce and industrialization. Far from being alarmed at this great change, they generally

embraced the new commercial civilization and its values. They saw it as a progressive, reforming force

that would undermine aristocratic privilege and religious fanaticism. Theirs was also an age of

increasing literacy: For the first time in history, reading ceased to be a monopoly of the rich and the

clergy. Intellectuals eagerly wrote for an audience of new readers, having not yet become alienated

from the “philistine” public in a posture of romantic weariness.

IV REASON AND REFORM

The central message of Enlightenment intellectuals was that unassisted human reason, not faith or

tradition, was the principal guide to politics and all human conduct. “Have courage to use your own

reason—that is the motto of Enlightenment,” the German philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote in 1784.

To Enlightenment thinkers, everything, including political and religious authority, must be subject to a

critique of reason if it were to command the respect of humanity. Particularly suspect were religious

faith and superstition. Humanity was not innately corrupt, as Catholicism taught, nor was the good life

found only in a blissful state of otherworldly salvation. Pleasure and happiness were worthy ends of

life and could be realized in this world. The natural universe was not governed by the miraculous

whimsy of a supernatural God. Rather, it was ruled by rational scientific laws, which were accessible to

human beings through the scientific method of experiment and observation.

Science and technology were the engines of progress, enabling modern people to force nature to serve

their well-being and increase their happiness. Science and the conquest of superstition and ignorance

provided the prospect to endlessly improve and reform the human condition, to progress toward a

future that was perfection. The Enlightenment elevated the individual and the moral legitimacy of self-

interest. It sought to free the individual from all kinds of external corporate or communal limitations.

Further, it sought to reform the political, moral, intellectual, and economic worlds to serve individual

interests.

More than anyone else, Voltaire, with his motto Ecrasez l'infâme ('Crush the infamous thing'),

symbolized the war against the evils, including torture and persecution, bred by religious fanaticism

and superstition—the “infamous thing.” But virtually all Enlightenment theorists followed the lead of

Locke’s famous “Letter on Toleration” (1689) in demanding freedom of religion. They argued that if

religion were removed from public life and public authority, it would be reserved for the private sphere

of individual preference and individual practice. Public matters in a commercial society concerned

markets and property, not the saving of souls. Voltaire approvingly described the Royal Exchange in

London as the place where “the Jew, the Mahometan, and the Christian transact together, as though

they all professed the same religion, and give the name of infidel to none but bankrupts.” Jefferson, in

turn, rendered the same liberal, tolerant theme in simple American folk wisdom: “The legitimate

powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for

my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

Faith in progress required that the aristocratic, feudal past be viewed critically, and once again

Voltaire guided the Enlightenment. History, he wrote, in 1754, is “little else than a long succession of

useless cruelties” and “a collection of crimes, follies, and misfortunes.” Progressive Enlightenment

philosophers had no respect for the superstitious past and its political traditions in general, which

could not pass the skeptical test of reason. The American philosophe Thomas Jefferson summarized

this ideal, attacking what he labeled “the Gothic idea,” which dictates that one “look backwards

instead of forwards for the improvement of the human mind.” Jefferson argued that Americans would

have nothing to do with such errors: “To recur to the annals of our ancestors for what is most perfect

in government, in religion, in learning, is worthy of those bigots in religion, and government, by whom

it is recommended, and whose purpose it would answer. But it is not an idea which this country will

endure.”

Enlightenment thinkers such as Jefferson viewed humanity as no longer chained to the past, with its

irrational, repressive, and unjust institutions. Guided by their reason, enlightened men and women

could change and reform their political world. They could shake off the oppressive weight of tradition

and custom. For most Enlightenment writers this meant political reforms. They directed these reforms

against what they considered the tyrannical power of the Church, the nobility, and the monarchy.

Such reforms were for the benefit of the free individual.

V LIBERAL INDIVIDUALISM

At the heart of the Enlightenment’s social and political thought lies a profoundly radical individualism.

Enlightenment philosophers proclaimed the individual as the creator of meaning, truth, and even

reality. The Enlightenment’s political ideal set the individual free politically, intellectually, and

economically. It demystified the political universe, as rational acts of consent replaced the magical

power of thrones, scepters, and crowns. The individual (understood in the Enlightenment as male and

property-owning) did not receive government and authority from a God who had given his secular

sword to princes and magistrates to rule by divine right. Nor did the individual keep to his lower place

in a divinely inspired hierarchy, in which kings and noblemen had been placed above him as society’s

natural governors.

Government, Enlightenment theorists argued, was voluntarily established by free individuals through a

willful act of contract. Individuals rationally agreed to limit their own freedom and to obey civil

authority in exchange for public protection of their natural rights. Government’s purpose was to serve

self-interest, to enable individuals to enjoy peacefully their rights to life, liberty, and property. It was

not to serve the glory of God or dynasties—and certainly was not to dictate moral or religious truth.

The Enlightenment saw the individual as free in the intellectual and moral world as well. Governments

should only be concerned with the worldly matters of life and property, not with immaterial things

such as the salvation of souls. Public authority, be it secular or spiritual, was not to enforce

unquestioned and absolute truths upon individuals. Matters of belief and moral conviction had to be

reserved for the private realm, where each individual was free to believe as he wished. Public law no

longer enforced God’s higher truths nor any ideal of the moral life; it merely kept order. Clerical or

royal censorship and persecution of free individual minds was the lightning rod for contempt.

VI REMOVING ECONOMIC RESTRAINTS

As the liberalism of the Enlightenment would free the individual from intellectual constraint, so it

would also liberate the individual from economic restraints on private initiative. The Enlightenment

rejected the ideas of a moral economy in which economic activity was understood to serve moral ends

of justice, whether these ends were realized through church-imposed constraints on wages and prices

or through magistrates setting prices and providing food to the poor. Church, state, and guilds

(powerful trade associations) would no longer oversee economic activity. Instead, individuals would be

left alone to seek their own self-interest in a free voluntary market, which would work toward the

good of all through “an invisible hand.”

These Enlightenment ideals are associated principally with the Scottish philosopher and economist

Adam Smith and the French Physiocrats, the name used for proponents of the economic theories

proposed by Anne Robert Jacques Turgot and Françoise Quesnay. However, such ideals pervade the

era and are found in the writings of Voltaire and Jefferson as well.

Jefferson knew exactly what he was doing when he changed Locke’s trilogy of rights “life, liberty, and

property” to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Property, and the individual’s right to it, was

but one form of the larger human right to individual happiness. The Enlightenment’s revolutionary

objective, enshrined in Jefferson’s text for the Declaration of Independence, was to place the

sacredness of each individual’s quest for happiness at the heart of politics. No longer was there

assumed to be a Christian conception of the good life or the moral life, defined by the church and

state. The Enlightenment assumption was that each individual pursued his or her own happiness and

individual sense of the good life—as long as in doing so they did not interfere with other people’s lives,

liberty, or pursuit of happiness. Or as Jefferson put it, as long as “it neither picks my pocket, nor

breaks my leg.”

VII THE AMERICAN AND FRENCH REVOLUTIONS

For many, the Enlightenment’s rejection of feudalism and aristocracy along with its faith in progress

through unfettered individualism were realized in the American (1775-1783) and French (1789-1799)

revolutions. The French philosophe the marquis de Condorcet described America as, of all nations,

“the most enlightened, the freest and the least burdened by prejudices.” Its respect for human rights,

he wrote, provided a lesson for all the peoples of the world. He offered what would be the

characteristic praise of America, where there were “no distinctions of class” and where property was

secure and hard work encouraged. In America no spiritual or political aristocracy, he wrote, held “a

part of the human race in a state of humiliation, simplicity, and misery.” Diderot, in turn, saw America

as “offering all the inhabitants of Europe an asylum against fanaticism and tyranny.” For Turgot, the

American people were “the hope of the human race, they may well become its model.” Anglo-

American political philosopher Thomas Paine joined the chorus, writing that the cause of America was

“the cause of all mankind.”

The French Revolution, as well, seemed to realize much of the Enlightenment’s agenda. The politics of

the aristocratic and monarchical old order were replaced by parliamentary institutions and the

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Feudal restrictions on individual economic activity

were removed. Primogeniture (the firstborn son’s right to property inheritance), enforced tithes, and

obligatory service to the lord of the manor gave way to new economic ideals focused on individual

property rights and free market principles. The revolutionaries waged a vigorous campaign to “de-

Christianize” France. The state took over schools and church property, making the clergy civic

employees.

VIII LEGACIES OF ENLIGHTENMENT THOUGHT

The excesses of the French Revolution, especially Maximilien Robespierre and the Reign of Terror, led

many observers associated with the conservative and romantic movements of the late 18th and early

19th centuries to condemn the Enlightenment as having too exalted a view of human reason. These

observers argued that the Enlightenment neglected the roles played in human nature by feelings,

imagination, spirit, and intuition. Similarly, the Enlightenment, with its zeal for political reform, was

criticized as misunderstanding the useful roles that tradition, custom, and habit play in society.

Today, environmentalists criticize the Enlightenment’s worship of science and technology, citing the

damage done by human-produced innovations such as pesticides and auto exhaust. Devout Christians

find fault with the movement’s strictly secular vision of the state. Communitarians, who believe in a

cooperative way of life, take issue with its rampant individualism. Still, Enlightenment social and

political ideals live on today in the rhetoric of those who argue for reason, reform, and tolerance in the

face of custom, tradition, and orthodoxy.

About the author: Isaac Kramnick is the Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government at Cornell

University in Ithaca, New York. He is the author of several books, including The Godless Constitution:

The Case Against Religious Correctness (1996).


Until the French Revolution of 1789, France was a monarchy, governed by famous kings such as

Henry IV and Louis XIV. The revolution abolished the monarchy but failed to establish a

durable democracy. Power fell to Napoleon Bonaparte, and he eventually created an empire.

Upon Bonaparte’s military defeat in 1815, the countries arrayed against him restored the French

monarchy. The revolution of 1848 abolished the monarchy once again, and in 1852 Napoleon III,

the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, established a new empire. This regime crumbled in 1870

when Napoleon III was taken prisoner by Germany during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-

1871).

Democracy returned to France under the Third Republic, a system of government formally

established by the constitution of 1875. A president, elected by a two-chambered parliament,

replaced the emperor, and a cabinet responsible to the parliament exercised legislative powers.

Governing during the Third Republic often proved challenging: Parliamentary coalitions shifted

continually between elections, and cabinets fell frequently. The Third Republic survived until

1940, when German troops occupied France during World War II and an authoritarian

collaborationist regime was established at Vichy.

In 1946, after the war ended, French voters approved the constitution of the Fourth Republic.

The new constitution included several revisions intended to ensure a stable government, but it

did not resolve the nation’s recurrent cabinet crises. France had 26 different governments during

the Fourth Republic’s 12-year existence. In 1958 an insurrection in Algeria, then under French

control, created fear of a coup d'état in France itself. General Charles de Gaulle, a French

resistance leader during World War II, was invited to form a new government and draft a new

constitution. De Gaulle favored a presidential system with a strong, stable executive at the center

of power. His constitution was overwhelmingly approved by popular referendum and established

the legal basis of the Fifth Republic. De Gaulle took office as the first president of the Fifth

Republic.

Bastille

Bastille, former French prison fortress in Paris that became a symbol of royal tyranny. It was built

about 1370 as part of the fortifications on the east wall of the city. During the 17th and 18th

centuries, the Bastille was used primarily for housing political prisoners. Citizens of every class and

profession, if for any reason deemed obnoxious to the royal court, were arrested by secret warrants

called lettres-de-cachet and imprisoned indefinitely in the Bastille without accusation or trial.

At the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, the Bastille was attacked and captured by a mob

assisted by royal troops. Two days later the destruction of the stronghold was begun amid great public

rejoicings. The site is now an open square, called the Place de la Bastille. Bastille Day is the national

holiday in France, celebrated annually on July 14.


The French Revolution

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Transcript of The French Revolution