Chapter 19

The French Revolution & Napoleon

  • June 20th, 1789, members of the National Assembly found their meeting hall locked.
  • These middle class members wanted reforms and insisted that the nobles & clergy meet with them.
  • They met at an indoor tennis court and Jean-Joseph Mounier suggested an oath to be unified & meet until a constitution is established.
  • The National Assembly members who took the Tennis Court Oath were children of the Enlightenment.
  • The French Revolution destroyed an absolute monarchy & was a major influence of the modern era in politics.

On the Eve of Revolution

19.1

  • April 28, 1789 rumors spread that the owner of Reveillon wallpaper factory in Paris planned to cut wages
  • Workers destroyed the owners home. By chance, a group of nobles were returning from the race tracks.
  • The nobles were insulted & some forced to say “long live the Third Estate”

The Old Regime (Ancient regime)

  • France had three classes: First Estate (clergy), Second Estate (nobility), Third Estate ( everyone else)

The clergy (Nuns, monks, priests)

  • Owned 10% of land, collected tithes, & didn’t pay direct taxes.
  • Church leaders were mostly nobles & lived very well. Parish priests were from the commoners & poor.
  • The clergy provided social services such as schools, hospitals, & orphanages.
  • Philosophes spoke out against the Church, and it criticized them as being against the moral order.

Nobles:

  • 1600s, Richelieu & Louis XIV destroyed the nobles military power but gave them certain rights.
  • Rights: top jobs in government, army, courts, & the Church.
  • Many nobles had little money income, hated absolutism, & royal bureaucracy (middle class officials )
  • They feared losing privileges such as exemption (exception) from paying taxes.

The Third Estate:

  • 27 million or 98% of the population.
  • At the top are the bourgeoisie or middle class: bankers, merchants, manufacturers, lawyers, doctors, journalists, professors, & artisans.
  • 9/10 were rural peasants. Some were landowners, others tenant (renting) farmers, & others were serfs.
  • The poorest were city workers: apprentices, journeymen, servants, stable hands, hawkers, & laborers.

Discontent:

  • Rich bourgeois could buy political offices or titles, but the best jobs were kept for nobles.
  • City workers earned very low wages.
  • Peasants had to pay so many taxes & owed corvee (free repair of roads & bridges)
  • Only nobles can hunt game (wild animals). Peasants cannot even kill animals that ate their crops.
  • Nobles tried to get peasants to pay manor dues.
  • Abbe Sieyes, a clergyman, wrote a pamphlet questioning the privileges of the first two estates.

A Financial Crisis:

  • Years of deficit spending (spending more than income)due to the Seven Years’ War & the American Revolution.
  • By 1789, half its income went just to pay interest on the debt.
  • Nobles & the clergy didn’t want to lose their tax exemption.

A crumbling Economy:

  • 1780s, bad harvests raised food prices, so people starved and rioted.

Failure of reform:

  • Louis XV 1715—1774 was only after fun.
  • Louis XVI was well-meaning but weak. He chose Jacques Necker as adviser.
  • Necker suggested improvements to the economy, but was fired after he suggested taxing the 1st & 2nd estates.
  • The powerful classes demanded the king call the Estate General , which had not been called for 175 years.

The King Takes Action

  • Louis XVI called the Estates General to meet at Versailles in May 1789
  • The cahiers: Louis asked the three estates to prepare notebooks with all their complaints.
  • The cahiers demanded fairer taxes, freedom of the press, or regular meetings of the estates general.

The Tennis Court Oath:

  • Members of the Estates General from the Third Estate were elected by propertied men.
  • They were mostly lawyers, middle-class officials, & writers--- familiar with the writings of philosophes
  • Traditionaly, each state met separately & voted as group, which allowed the 1st & 2nd estates to outvote the 3rd. Hence there was a problem over the issue of voting.
  • Representatives of the 3rd Estate called themselves the National Assembly & invited others to shape the constitutions.
  • When some reform-minded clergy & nobles joined the assembly, Louis XVI had to accept it.

Storming the Bastille:

  • Rumors that the royal troops were going to occupy the capital led 800 Parisians to gather outside the Bastille, a fortress used as prison.
  • They wanted weapons & gunpowder believed to be stored there.
  • The commander of the Bastille opened fire on the crowd. In a 4hr battle, 98 people were killed & the fortress was overrun & the commander with five of his guards were killed.
  • July 14th is celebrated as Bastille Day, the French National holiday.