French Revolution 1789 - 1799

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French Revolution1789 - 1799
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Four Stages

1. Moderate (1789-1792)
2. Reign of Terror (1793-1794)
3. Reaction (1794-1798)
4. Napoleonic (1799-1815)

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Revolution

• Class
• resentments

Financial crisis
Bad harvests
Enlightenment ideas
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Before the Revolution

• Le Ancien Regime
• The Old Regime

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Financial Crisis

• Economic troubles
• Louis XIV XV
• Wars
• Outdated tax system
• Clergy/nobles
• Exempt from taxes
• Commoners
• Indirect taxes
• taille-produce
• gabelle-salt
• 20 increase under Louis XVI
• Taxes to lords

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Financial Crisis

• Wars
• Seven Years War, American Revolution
• Lost significant overseas revenue
• Financed with borrowed money

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Louis XVI Where is the tax money?
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Failed financial reforms

• Strength of Aristocracy and Bourgeoisie
• State couldnt declare bankruptcy
• Attempted reform of tax system in 1787 fails
  (leads to calling of the Estates General)
• No central bank
• France still used gold as currency
• Couldnt print money to create inflation

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Jacques Necker, Minister of Finance
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Three Estates

• Divisions based on class and rank
• First Estate
• Church
• Second Estate
• Nobles
• Third Estate
• Bourgeoisie
• Working poor
• Rural peasants

No Taxes
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Three Estates
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Estate Role in society Needs
1st Clergy less than 1 of population owned 20 of land tax free About 100,000 registration of births, marriages and deaths collected the tithe censored books served as moral police operated schools and hospitals distributed relief to the poor A decrease in the power of the Monarch and increase in their political power. Maintain their property rights
2nd Nobility less than 2 of population Exempt from corvee, gabelle and taille About 400,000 ??? To maintain their current position
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3rd Estate (mostly townspeople)
97 Wants and needs
upper middle lower Bourgeoisie merchants professionals craftsmen Working poor Peasants Political Power to match their economic power (exemption from taxes) Social recognition less taxes and lower rent Rewards for their work and food on the table

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The Monarchy

• Careless, spendthrift, foolish
• Inherited a country on the precipice of
  bankruptcy
• Louis XIV La etat, ces Moi
• Louis XV Apres Moi, le deluge
• Virtuous, but uninterested in government

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The Monarchy

• People were starving, but the royal family
  flaunted their wealth, indulged in excesses,
  appeared uncaring
• Widespread criticism of royal excesses undermined
  the monarchy
• Marie Antoinette and her scandals

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Dress Scandal
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Affair of the Diamond Necklace

• 647 diamonds
• 1.8m francs8m today
• Refused many times by the queen
• Commissioned by Louis XV for Madame Dubarry
• Jeanne de Saint-Remy de Valois, Comtesse de la
  Motte
• Cardinal Louis Rene Edouard, Prince de Rohan
• Trial and scandal

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Model Peasant Village

• Gardens of Versailles
• Escape from court life
• Milking parlor, pigsty, cowshed, 12 cottages
• Dressed in rustic costume
• Supervised peasants at work
• Performed in plays about country life

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• Marie Antoinette and her children - 1787This
  is one of the last portraits that Elisabeth
  Louise Vigee Le Brun painted of the doomed queen.
  The picture shows Marie Therese Charlotte de
  France, Madame Royale, and her brother,
  Louis-Joseph, Le Dauphin, standing. Louis-Joseph
  died of natural causes early in the year that the
  revolution began. The next younger child,
  Louis-Charles, Duc de Normandie, shown on the
  Queen's lap, then became the second Dauphin.
  After his father had been guillotined he became
  known as Louis XVII. This Louis may have been
  murdered, or may have died of other causes while
  imprisoned in the temple. In another theory it
  was thought he may have survived after being
  exchanged for another sickly child. In April 2000
  it was proved by DNA analysis that the body of a
  boy found in a temple was in fact the body of
  Louis XVII. He died of malnutrition and neglect.
  The empty cradle is a reference to Princess
  Sophie, who was born and died in 1786.This
  painting still hangs at Versailles.

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France in the late 18th Century

• Population around 28 million
• Grew 10 million in 100 years
• Over 20 million in the countryside
• A few large towns, but dominated by Paris with
  over 600,000 people.
• 1780s are marked by a series of crop failures and
  rising food prices
• Marked with periodic rebellions

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of income spent on breadfor the average laborer
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Enlightenment Ideas Spread

• Liberty-Natural rights
• Sovereignty of the people
• Equality
• Under the law
• Bourgeois ambitions and discontent
• Abbe Sieyes What is the Third Estate 1788
• Libertad, Egalidad, Fraternidad!

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Abbe Sieyes
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What is the Third Estate?

• Everything.
• What has it been until Now?
• Nothing.
• What does it demand?
• To become something.
• Abbé Sieyès
• "What is the third Estate?
• "Qu'est-ce que le Tiers-Etat?"
• January 1789

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Moderate Stage

• 1789-1792

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Estates General at the palace of Versailles
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Calling of the Estates General

• Called in July 1788 to meet in 1789
• First time since 1614
• End of Absolutism
• Parlements decides EG will be conducted in the
  same way as before
• One voter per Estate
• This disgusts the Third Estate

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Cahiers de doleances
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Cahiers des Doleances

• Objections to the current system
• Main Demands
• Eliminate Lettres de Cachet
• (i.e. demands due process)
• Nation decides its own taxes
• Estates General every 4 years
• Equal taxes on all classes
• Third Estate representation in Parlements

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At the Estates General

• May 5th 1789
• Background of rising bread prices
• Third Estate urges reform, relief, equal voice
  (vote by head, not estate)
• Third Estate declares the National Assembly on
  June 17th 1789 after weeks of arguing and
  stalemate
• Locked out of meeting place, convenes on the
  Kings tennis courts

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Tennis Court Oath
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The Tennis Court Oath

• June 20th 1789
• Will not disband until a constitution is drafted
• Conservatives on right, Liberals on left
• Starts making laws in the name of the French
  people

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Rising Tensions

• June 27th Louis orders nobles and clergy to join
  the Third Estate- they refuse
• Louis orders army near Paris Versailles
• Soaring bread prices
• Fear of aristocratic plot against Assembly
• Storming of the Bastille, July 14th
• Aristocrats flee
• Louis withdraws troops

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Storming of the Bastille July 14th 1789
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Chain Reaction

• Peasants in the countryside hear of the success
  of the Paris riots
• Triggers riots throughout France
• The Great Fear
• Looting (food)
• Burning (houses of Lords, records of obligations)
• Louis acts indecisively
• People begin to demand his removal

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The Great Fear
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The Pathof theGreatFear
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The awakening of the Third Estatethe nobility
and clergy recoil in fear
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August 4th 1789

• Emergency night session called in response to Le
  Grande Peur
• National Assembly ends serfdom, feudalism, all
  class privilege (August Decrees)
• Liberty, equality, fraternity
• Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the
  Citizen
• Calls for a constitutional monarchy like that of
  Britain

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Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the
Citizen Adopted August 26, 1789
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Womens march to Versailles, October 5, 1789
We want the baker, the bakers wife and the
bakers boy!
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October Days

• Louis had not accepted the August 4 decrees or
  the Declaration
• Women (and men) march on Versailles to demand
  bread
• Joined by 20,000 Paris Guards
• Louis promises bread
• Royal family forced to Paris
• Remove Louis from the influence of his corrupt
  ministers

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The National Assembly Reforms

• Subordination of Church to State
• Confiscates Church property (Nov. 1789)
• Sells land to pay public debt
• Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790)
• Reduces power of bishops
• Clergy selected and paid by the State
• Oath of Allegiance

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Confiscation of Church Lands
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Caricature showing the jubilation of the clergy
after the reforms
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Print Assignats
Issued by the National Constituent
Assembly. Interest-bearing notes with church
lands as security.
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The National Assembly Reforms

• Administrative reforms
• 83 new administrative units replace the
  uncoordinated provinces
• Standardized system of courts
• Abolition of torture and sale of judicial offices
• Citizen juries created

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Re-Division of France, 1790
83 administrative units of roughly equal size
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The National Assembly Reforms

• Economic reforms
• Uniform system of weights and measures
• Abolition of guild restrictions
• Elimination of taxes on goods transported within
  the country

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The National Assembly Reforms

• Constitution of 1791 (Sept.)
• Louis forced to accept the Constitution

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Constitution of 1791
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Back-track Flight to Varennes

• Louis tries to escape the Tuileries (June 20,
  1791)
• Planned to mobilize troops with help from Leopold
  II of Austria

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Back-track Flight to Varennes

• Austria and Prussia issue the Declaration of
  Pillnitz
• States intention to intervene in France under
  certain situations
• Response of Legislative Assembly
• we will incite a war of people against kings

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Olympe de Gouges (1745-1793) Declaration of the
Rights of Woman and of the Citizen
(1791) Against the execution of the
King Guillotined in 1793 as a reactionary
royalist
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End of the Revolution?

• By the end of September 1791, the National
  Assembly announces that its work is done
• All goals seem to have been achieved
• Only a radical minority clamor for more
• Things seem to be settling down
• HOWEVER

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La Marseilles
Let us go, children of the father land Out day of Glory has arrived Against us stands tyranny, The bloody flag is raised The bloody flag is raised. Do you hear in the countryside The roar of these savage soldiers They come right into our arms To cut the throat of your sons, Your country. To arms, citizens! Form up your battalions Let us march, Let us march! That their impure blood Should water our fields
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The Tricolor (1789)
The WHITE of the Bourbons the RED BLUE of
Paris.
Citizen!
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The Liberty Cap Bonne Rouge