The French RevolutionKelsey Fitzy, Krislyn Chan, Kristysha Chan
Influences/ Causes
•Ancien Régime undermined by precepts advocated by apostles of the Enlightenment
-Diderot attacked social tradition
-Voltaire attacked church + absolutism
-Rousseau advocated popular sovereignty
-Physiocrats try to promote econ reform
•American Revolution: people able to overthrown an oppressive government
•The "fixed" order of the ancien régime limited ______ability to exercise pol/soc influence
•Lower classes taxed heavily to pay foreign wars, court extravagance, and national debt
•Backward agricultural methods + internal tariff barriers + rural overpopulation = food shortages
•French participation in American Revolution incurred huge national debt > Director General of Finances Charles Alexandre de Calonne called the ______(1787) to attempt to avert the financial crisis
Build up to the Revolution
•In December Louis XVI promised to call the Estates General in 5 years. By that time Calonne had been succeeded by Brienne, and then Jacques Necker as finance minister.
•In Aug, 1788 Louis XVI agreed to call the Estates General on 5 May of 1789.
•When the Parlement of Paris ruled that Estates General should again sit separately, thebourgeoisie demanded a single assembly dominated by the Third Estate to ensure fundamental reforms.
•Cahiers de Doleances:______.
•On June 17, 1789 the Third Estate declared that it would not meet as a medieval estate based on social status but instead would only assemble before the king as a National Assembly representing the political will of the entire French nation.
•The Tennis Court Oath: ______.
•Economic depression > panic
The Revolution
•peasants stormed the ______on July 14, 1789
•The ______became the government of Paris from 1789 until 1795- refused to take orders from the central gvt
•The Great Fear led all aristocrats to ______> all of France equal under the law
The Constitutional Monarchy
•On August 27 1789, the National Assembly issued the ______
•Olympe de Gouges wrote The Rights of Women which argued for women’s rights of education, property, and divorce
•A shortage of bread in Paris inspired women to march to Versailles to air their grievances to the royal family > the royal family were marched out of Versailles and into Paris
•The National Assembly abolished th French nobility as a legal order and created a constitutional monarchy which Louis XVI reluctantly accepted in July 1790.
•The Civil Constitution of the Church made the church a department of the state. Bishops were chosen by assemblies of parish priests, who themselves were to be elected by their parishioners.
•France was divided into 83 departments, each with the same laws, customs, weights and measures.
•In 1793, the metric system instated as basis of the modern Système International d'Unités, abbreviated as SI.
•Monopolies, guilds and workers combinations were prohibited, andinternal tariffs were also abolished in France, getting rid of pockets of inequality.
The Second Revolution
•The fall of the monarchy marked a rapid radicalisation of the Revolution.
•After the September Massacres which followed Louis XVI's imprisonment, the new, popularly elected National Convention proclaimed France a republic on September 21, 1792.
•The Convention sentenced Louis XVI to death
•Girondins: favored starting a revolutionary war to liberate peasants in absolutist states
•Jacobins: ______
•they were locked in pol. strugglesince the Girondins feared a bloody dictatorship by La Montagne and La Montagne believed that the Girondins would turn to conservatives and royalists to retain power.
•The Girondins were fearful of the political influence of the ______and favored the continuation of voting rights based on property ownership
•La Montagne joined the sans-culottes activists in the city government to engineer a popular uprising, which forced the Convention to arrest 31 Girondin deputies for treason on June 2 > All power passed to La Montagne.
The Reign of Terror
•After thefall of the monarchy______became a central figure in the Jacobin Club, and his faction in theNational Convention, assembled in the fall of 1792, became known as Jacobins.
•The Convention created two committees, the Committee of ______and the Committee of ______.
•The Jacobins worked to create what they considered to be a Republic of Virtue
•There was also an attack on Christianity and the churches, and those in power forced the removal of religious symbols from public buildings
•The Jacobins sought to create a new popular culture fashioning symbols that broke with the past and glorified new order. It adopted a brand-new revolutionary calender which eliminated saints' days and renamed the days and months after the seasons of the year
•In August 1793, Lazare Carnot, the head of the military, called for alevée en masse, drafting the entire population for military service
•The armies proved to be surprisingly successful against the well-trained but unmotivated soldiers of Austria and Prussia
The Thermidorian Reaction
•The success of the French armies led Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety to relax the emergency economic controls but they extended the political Reign of Terror
•On 8 Thermidor (July 26, 1794), Robespierre spoke before the Convention about the need for one more purge but he did not have any supporters
•Robespierre and his leading supporters were arrested by the Thermidorians and after a quick trial the same day, they were escorted to the guillotine
The Directory
•The National Convention shifted control back to the more ______and bourgeoisie
•Constitution of 1795- indirect elections of 2-house legislature + 5-man executive
◦Council of Ancients
◦Council of Five Hundred
•War continued in order to maintain national unity and resolve the unemployment crisis
◦reinstated draft
•The collapse of Robespierre's economic controls hit the working poor hard
•Peasants of Paris revolted & were immediately suppressed
◦end of political influence until 1830
•Urban peasantry returned to ______and ______
•Victory against invasion from Prussia and Austria
•Napoleon gained fame for his military victories in Italy and defeat in Egypt
•Election of 1795- return of conservatives and monarchists in legislative assembly
•The Directory annulled the elections and began ruling as a dictatorship
•Public anger + draft + growing ______> faith in govt destroyed
•1799: Abbe Sieyes elected to the Directory and enlisted Napoleon to aid in a military coup
•Napoleon then dissolved the legislature and instituted himself as first consul
•______dictatorship
Results
•Napoleon Bonaparte consecrated as Emperor of France in 1804
•the ______: the Pope gave French Catholics the right to practice their religion freely, and Napoleon responsible for naming bishops + clergy
•Treaty of Amiens (1802) ended conflict with ______
•Civic Code of 1804: equality of all male citizens before the law + security of wealth and private property > ______gained land and status
•Napoleonic Code: women demoted to dependents on their fathers/husbands
Foreign Perspectives
•liberals and radicals in England saw the Revolution as a triumph of liberty over despotism & hoped to use the French as an example to reorder their own aristocratic Parliament
•Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution (1790)
•Mary Wollstonecraft'sA Vindication of the Rights of Man