A New Republic Is Born In Blood

The French Revolution

The Forces of Change

Four factors influence change in France:

1. Social Inequalities 2. Enlightenment Ideas3. Economic Conditions4. Poor leadership

1. SOCIAL INEQUALITIES

The Three Estates: social class system that had existed since the Middle Ages

Social Classes in France

First Estate = Catholic Priests• 1% of population• Paid very few taxes• Got $$ through tithes (taxes)

Second Estate = Nobility• 2% of population • Didn’t pay any taxes• Jobs in government and military• Got $$ from peasants who lived on

their land

Over-taxed peasant carrying a nobleman and priest on his

back.

Third Estate = Everyone Else

• 97% of population1. Bourgeoisie (middle

class)2. City workers3. Peasant farmers

• Paid VERY heavy taxes• Up to 50% of their

income!

Summing Up the Estates

2. ENLIGHTENMENT IDEAS

• Rousseau and Voltaire influenced Third Estate, especially the bourgeoisie (middle class).

• Questioned absolute power of the King, wanted equality and liberty • Inspired by American Revolution

While in prison, Louis XVI saw the works of Rousseau and Voltaire, and said: “Those two men have destroyed France!”

Many in France shared the beliefs of Comte D’Antraigues (a friend of Rousseau)

“The Third Estate is the People and the People is the foundation of the State; it is in fact the State itself; the other orders are merely political categories while by the immutable laws of nature the People is everything. Everything should be subordinated to it . . . . It is in the People that all national power resides and for the People that all states exist.”

3. ECONOMIC TROUBLES

High taxes and rising living costs = economic crisis

1. Louis XIV (14) = debt from Versailles and wars in Europe

2. Louis XV (15) = debt from lifestyle and war in New World (French and Indian War)

3. Louis XVI (16) and wife Marie Antoinette = debt from lifestyle• Doubled nation's debt!

4. Horrible winter (1788-1789) = crop failures and bread shortage• Farmers couldn’t pay taxes• Bread became too expensive for most people

4. POOR LEADERSHIP

Louis XVI (16th)

• Became king at 19

• Louis 14th’s great-grandson

Hmmm this seems so familiar…

• Married Marie Antoinette at 15 (she was 14) • Marie was part of Austrian royal family

• France and Austria had always been enemies • People hated Marie from the beginning

• Marie spent HUGE amount of $ on gowns, jewels, and parties

• Louis didn’t know how to be a king

• Debt solution: tax Second Estate• Second Estate said heck no!• Forced him to call a meeting of

the Estates-General

• Estates-General: Representatives from the Three Estates

• Hadn’t met for 175 years!

A Weak Leader

The Estates General• Each Estate met separately and got one vote

• First and Second Estates vote together• Third Estate couldn’t change anything

• Third Estate delegates want mass meeting with each delegate voting as an individual (gives Third Estate more votes)

• Louis said no and insisted on the old rules

Abbé Sieyès, a clergy member who supported the Third Estate, argued:

Therefore, what is the Third Estate? Everything; but an everything shackled and oppressed. What would it be without the privileged order? Everything, but an everything free and flourishing. Nothing can succeed

without it, everything would be infinitely better without the others.

June 17, 1789: Third Estate delegates establish National Assembly• National Assembly = new government designed to make reforms

and write a constitution, end absolute monarchy • This was the first deliberate act of revolution

June 20, 1789: Third Estate locked out of the meeting hall by Louis• Broke into nearby tennis court building, won’t leave until they had

written a new constitution• Known as Tennis Court Oath

Painting by Jacques-Louis David of the National Assembly making the Tennis Court Oath

Storming the Bastille

• Rumors spread Louis is bringing in military to stop National Assembly

• July 14, 1789: Mob attacked the Bastille (Paris prison) to steal gunpowder to defend the National Assembly

The fall of the Bastille became a symbolic act of revolution, and is now a French national holiday known as Bastille Day!

Great Fear: Fears spread from Paris to the countryside

• Rumors that nobles had hired people to kill peasants

• Peasants broke into manor houses, destroying property and records

• Some nobles were forced off their property

Burning chateaux as the peasants riot in the countryside

October 1789: Women’s March on Versailles - Parisian women revolted over price of bread. Broke into the palace at Versailles and killed two

guards. Forced royal family to move to Paris.

To Versailles, to Versailles. Women of Paris march to Versailles to bring back Louis XVI.

Reforming France

• August 1789: National Assembly adopts the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen• New rules and laws for

France

• Leaders use the slogan “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”

Reforming France - 1790

• Short term fix for financial crisis = sell Church lands

• Church now controlled by the gov’t• Priests have to swear an oath of allegiance to the gov’t;

any who refused were arrested• Gov’t arresting priests worried peasants and other

countries

Cartoon representation of the confiscation of Church lands

Reforming France

• September 1791: new constitution finishedo Limited monarchyo Most power given to

legislation

• Legislation had problems passing laws• Not everybody agreed!

“Flight to Varennes”• To get back in power, Louis XVI needed the help of a foreign

army

• June 20, 1791: King and his family, disguised as servants, try to flee!o At the village of Varennes, recognized and arrestedo Brought back to Paris and imprisoned at the Tuileries

Palace

Factions Split France

• Debt and food shortages were still major problems

• Émigrés (nobles who fled country) want Three Estates system back

• Sans-culottes “without knee breeches” (lower class) want more change from the Revolution

Parisian sans-culotte. Drawing, 18th century.

The End of Louis’ Independence

August 10, 1792: mob attacked the Tuileries Palace, royal family barely escaped

The Constitutional Monarchy is essentially over

• April 1792: France declared war against Austria • Remember … Marie Antoinette is

Austrian! o Prussia joins war as an Austrian

ally• Prussian forces soon threaten to

attack Paris!

European monarchs feared revolution would spread – they were contemplating war!

France at War!

September Massacres

• September 1792: Parisian mob breaks into prisons, killing over 1,000 prisoners

• Most were supporters of King

• National Assembly gave up idea of limited monarchy• Deposes the king (removed him from power)• Called for new legislature to replace itself

• “National Convention” took office in September, forming the French Republic

The Execution of Louis XVI• Louis put on trial for his crimes

o Debate over what the King’s punishment should be

o After a close vote, decided on execution (regicide)

• On January 23, 1793 Louis Capet went to the guillotine at the Place de la Concorde and was beheaded

I forgive my enemies; I trust that my death will be for the happiness of my people, but I grieve for France and I fear that she may suffer the anger of the Lord.

The Reign of TerrorJuly 1793 – July 1794

RADICALS• During the constitutional monarchy there had been two

radical groups competing for power - the Girondins and the Jacobinso The Girondins were slightly less radical than the

Jacobins

THE JACOBINS• Girondins argued against Louis’ execution• When the Jacobins “won”, public opinion turned again the

Girondins• 22 Girondin leaders arrested and executed!

• Maximilien Robespierre—Jacobin leader gains power and rules France as a dictator

• Tries to build a “republic of virtue”

• Tries to erase remnants of France’s past monarchy and nobility:o Churches closed all over France o Calendar changed- no Sundays (so

that people could no longer worship)

A New Dictatorship

The Reign of Terror• After Louis XVI’s death,

Reign of Terror began

• The Revolutionary Tribunal ordered executions in Paris

• Throughout France 30,000 people lost their lives during The Terror

• Thousands killed for being “enemies of the republic” and committing “crimes against liberty”

• Most of the were just ordinary people• Secret police

encouraged to arrest “suspicious persons”

Suspension of Civil Liberties

• Civil liberties suspended• Promises of the

Declaration of the Rights of Man forgotten

• The Committee of Public Safety, twelve men led by Robespierre, created to speed up the process of “trial” and conviction

The Last Victim of the Reign of Terror

• Robespierre called for more executions, including other Jacobins

• Jacobins decided they had had enough - Robespierre was arrested and sent to the guillotine

• He was the last victim of The Terror

“The French Revolution was a gate through which the Western world passed into modernity.

It was not the only passageway; neither did it represent a clean break with the past and a jump-start on modernity. But the Revolution took pre-existing conditions and ideas which

had been developing, particularly since the mid-1700s, passed them through a cataclysm, and

changed forever the way humanity saw society, religion, the state, and the nation.”

Kendall W. Brown, “The French Revolution and Modernity”