AP World History: The French Revolution

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AP World History The French Revolution

• Period 4

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I The Old Regime (Ancien Regime)

• A) Old Regime socio-political system which
  existed in most of Europe during the 18th century
• B) At this time many European countries were
  ruled by absolutism the monarch had absolute
  control over the government
• C) In France, people were divided into three
  estates

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II Causes of the French Revolution

• A) Frances economy was declining
• 1. Peasant farmers of France bore the burden of
  taxation
• 2. The price of bread was skyrocketing. The
  average 18th century worker spent half his daily
  wage on bread. When the grain crops failed in
  1788 and 1789, the price of bread shot up to 88
  of his wages! Many blamed the ruling class.
• 3. King Louis XVI lavished money on himself and
  residences like Versailles. Queen Marie
  Antoinette was seen as a wasteful spender. Thus
  the rumor of her saying Let them eat cake,
  which historians think she never actually said
• 4. The government funds were also depleted due to
  aiding the American Revolution.
• B) Enlightenment philosophes questioned the
  divine right of monarchs.
• C) Influence of the American Revolution!

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The French Monarchy
Marie Antoinette was not French, but was born an
Austrian princess! Born in Vienna, Austria, in
1755, Marie Antoinette was the 15th and last
child of Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and the
powerful Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa. She was
only 14 years old when she married the future
French King Louis XVI.
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Causes of the French Revolution Continued

• C) In the fall of 1786, Louis XVIs controller
  general, Charles Alexandre de Calonne proposed a
  universal land tax from which the privileged
  classes would no longer be exempt. To try and
  prevent the nobles from revolting, the king
  summoned the Estates-General (les états
  généraux) an assembly representing Frances
  clergy, nobility and middle classfor the first
  time since 1614. The meeting was scheduled for
  May 5, 1789 in the meantime, delegates of the
  three estates from each locality would compile
  lists of grievances to present to the king. The
  Third Estate now represented 98 of the people
  but could still be outvoted by the other two
  bodies. In the lead-up to the May 5 meeting, the
  Third Estate began to mobilize support for equal
  representation and the abolishment of the noble
  vetoin other words, they wanted voting by head
  and not by status. However, the nobles did not
  want to give up the privileges they enjoyed under
  the traditional system.

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Causes of the French Revolution Continued

• D) By the time the Estates-General convened at
  Versailles, the issue over the power of the 3rd
  Estates vote was still not solved. On June 17,
  the 3rd Estate met alone and formally adopted the
  title of the National Assembly. Immediately Louis
  XVI locked the National Assembly out of the
  Estates-General meeting. 3 days later, the
  National Assembly met in a nearby indoor tennis
  court and took the Tennis Court Oath, vowing not
  to disperse until constitutional reform had been
  achieved. On June 23, 1789, Louis XVI relented.
  He ordered the 3 estates to meet together as the
  National Assembly and vote, by population, on a
  constitution for France.

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The Tennis Court Oath

• The National Assembly, considering that it has
  been summoned to establish the constitution of
  the kingdom, to effect the regeneration of the
  public order, and to maintain the true
  principles of monarchy that nothing can prevent
  it from continuing its deliberations in whatever
  place it may be forced to establish itself and,
  finally, that wheresoever its members are
  assembled, there is the National Assembly
  Decrees that all members of this Assembly shall
  immediately take a solemn oath not to separate,
  and to reassemble wherever circumstances
  require, until the constitution of the kingdom
  is established and consolidated upon firm
  foundations and that, the said oath taken, all
  members and each one of them individually shall
  ratify this steadfast resolution by signature.

Bronze Relief, 1883
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(No Transcript)
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III The Storming of the Bastille and the Great
Fear

• On June 12, as the National Assembly (known as
  the National Constituent Assembly during its work
  on a constitution) continued to meet at
  Versailles, Parisians panicked as rumors of an
  impending military coup began to circulate.
• On July 14 rioters stormed the Bastille fortress
  in an attempt to secure gunpowder and weapons
  many consider this event, now commemorated in
  France as a national holiday, as the start of the
  French Revolution.
• Revolting against years of exploitation,
  peasants looted and burned the homes of tax
  collectors, landlords and nobles. Known as the
  Great Fear, the revolts hastened the growing
  exodus of nobles from the country and inspired
  the National Constituent Assembly to abolish
  feudalism on August 4, 1789.

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The Storming the Bastille

• The Bastille was originally constructed in 1370
  to protect the walled city of Paris from English
  attack. It was first used as a state prison in
  the 17th century, and its cells were reserved for
  upper-class felons and political troublemakers.
  Most prisoners there were imprisoned without a
  trial under direct orders of the king.
  Bernard-Jordan de Launay, the military governor
  of the Bastille, feared that his fortress would
  be a target for the revolutionaries and so
  requested reinforcements, and transferred 250
  barrels of gunpowder to the Bastille from the
  Paris Arsenal. Launay brought his men into the
  Bastille and raised its two drawbridges. On July
  13, revolutionaries with muskets began firing at
  soldiers standing guard on the Bastilles towers
  and then took cover in the Bastilles courtyard
  when Launays men fired back. That evening, mobs
  stormed the Paris Arsenal and another armory and
  acquired thousands of muskets. At dawn on July
  14, a great crowd armed with muskets and swords.

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The Storming the Bastille Continued

• Launay promised he would not open fire on the
  crowd and showed them that his cannons were not
  loaded. Instead of calming the crowd, news of the
  unloaded cannons emboldened a group of men to
  climb over the outer wall of the courtyard and
  lower a drawbridge. 300 revolutionaries rushed
  in. When the mob outside began trying to lower
  the second drawbridge, Launay ordered his men to
  open fire. 100 rioters were killed or wounded.
  Around 3 p.m., a company of deserters from the
  French army arrived. The soldiers, hidden by
  smoke from fires set by the mob, dragged five
  cannons into the courtyard and aimed them at the
  Bastille. Launay raised a white flag of surrender
  over the fortress. Launay and his men were taken
  into custody, the gunpowder and cannons were
  seized, and the 7 prisoners of the Bastille were
  freed. The capture of the Bastille symbolized the
  end of the ancien regime and provided the French
  revolutionary cause with an irresistible
  momentum.

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Bastille Day, Paris
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IV Drafting a Constitution

• A) On August 4, the National Constituent Assembly
  adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and
  of the Citizen, a statement of democratic
  principles grounded in the philosophical and
  political ideas of Enlightenment thinkers like
  Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The document proclaimed
  the Assemblys commitment to replace the ancien
  régime with a system based on equal opportunity,
  freedom of speech, popular sovereignty and
  representative government.
• B) Drafting a formal constitution was a challenge
  as the members of the National Constituent
  Assembly had to deal with questions such as
• Who would be responsible for electing delegates?
• Would the clergy owe allegiance to the Roman
  Catholic Church or the French government?
• How much authority would the king, his public
  image further weakened after a failed attempt to
  flee in June 1791, retain?

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Primary Source The Declaration of the Rights of
Man and of the Citizen

• Approved by the National Assembly of France,
  August 26, 1789
• The representatives of the French people,
  organized as a National Assembly, believing that
  the ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights
  of man are the sole cause of public calamities
  and of the corruption of governments, have
  determined to set forth in a solemn declaration
  the natural, unalienable, and sacred rights of
  man, in order that this declaration, being
  constantly before all the members of the Social
  body, shall remind them continually of their
  rights and duties Therefore the National
  Assembly recognizes and proclaims, in the
  presence and under the auspices of the Supreme
  Being, the following rights of man and of the
  citizen

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Drafting a Constitution Continued

• C) Adopted on September 3, 1791, Frances first
  written constitution echoed the more moderate
  voices in the Assembly, establishing a
  constitutional monarchy in which the king enjoyed
  royal veto power and the ability to appoint
  ministers.
• D) This compromise did not sit well with
  influential radicals like Maximilien de
  Robespierre (1758-1794), Camille Desmoulins
  (1760-1794) and Georges Danton (1759-1794), who
  began drumming up popular support for a more
  republican form of government and the trial of
  Louis XVI.

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Declaration of the Rights of Man Continued

• Articles
• 1. Men are born and remain free and equal in
  rights. Social distinctions may be founded only
  upon the general good.
• 2. The aim of all political association is the
  preservation of the natural and imprescriptible
  rights of man. These rights are liberty,
  property, security, and resistance to oppression.
  
• 3. The principle of all sovereignty resides
  essentially in the nation. No body nor individual
  may exercise any authority which does not proceed
  directly from the nation.
• 4. Liberty consists in the freedom to do
  everything which injures no one else hence the
  exercise of the natural rights of each man has no
  limits except those which assure to the other
  members of the society the enjoyment of the same
  rights. These limits can only be determined by
  law.
• 5. Law can only prohibit such actions as are
  hurtful to society. Nothing may be prevented
  which is not forbidden by law, and no one may be
  forced to do anything not provided for by law.
• 6. Law is the expression of the general will.
  Every citizen has a right to participate
  personally, or through his representative, in its
  foundation. It must be the same for all, whether
  it protects or punishes. All citizens, being
  equal in the eyes of the law, are equally
  eligible to all dignities and to all public
  positions and occupations, according to their
  abilities, and without distinction except that of
  their virtues and talents.
• 7. No person shall be accused, arrested, or
  imprisoned except in the cases and according to
  the forms prescribed by law. Any one soliciting,
  transmitting, executing, or causing to be
  executed, any arbitrary order, shall be punished.
  But any citizen summoned or arrested in virtue of
  the law shall submit without delay, as resistance
  constitutes an offense.
• 8. The law shall provide for such punishments
  only as are strictly and obviously necessary, and
  no one shall suffer punishment except it be
  legally inflicted in virtue of a law passed and
  promulgated before the commission of the offense..

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Declaration of the Rights of Man Continued

• 9. As all persons are held innocent until they
  shall have been declared guilty, if arrest shall
  be deemed indispensable, all harshness not
  essential to the securing of the prisoner's
  person shall be severely repressed by law.
• 10. No one shall be disquieted on account of his
  opinions, including his religious views, provided
  their manifestation does not disturb the public
  order established by law.
• 11. The free communication of ideas and opinions
  is one of the most precious of the rights of man.
  Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and
  print with freedom, but shall be responsible for
  such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined
  by law.
• 12. The security of the rights of man and of the
  citizen requires public military forces. These
  forces are, therefore, established for the good
  of all and not for the personal advantage of
  those to whom they shall be intrusted.
• 13. A common contribution is essential for the
  maintenance of the public forces and for the cost
  of administration. This should be equitably
  distributed among all the citizens in proportion
  to their means.
• 14. All the citizens have a right to decide,
  either personally or by their representatives, as
  to the necessity of the public contribution to
  grant this freely to know to what uses it is
  put and to fix the proportion, the mode of
  assessment and of collection and the duration of
  the taxes.
• 15. Society has the right to require of every
  public agent an account of his administration.
• 16. A society in which the observance of the law
  is not assured, nor the separation of powers
  defined, has no constitution at all.
• 17. Since property is an inviolable and sacred
  right, no one shall be deprived thereof except
  where public necessity, legally determined, shall
  clearly demand it, and then only on condition
  that the owner shall have been previously and
  equitably indemnified

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V The Reign of Terror

• A) In April 1792, the newly elected Legislative
  Assembly declared war on Austria and Prussia,
  where it believed that French émigrés were
  building counterrevolutionary alliances.
• B) Back in France, a group of radicals led by the
  extremist Jacobins attacked the royal residence
  in Paris and arrested the king on August 10,
  1792.
• C) When the Jacobins sent gangs into the prisons
  to try to butcher 1400 victims, the Assembly
  could offer only feeble resistance. The
  Legislative Assembly was replaced by the National
  Convention, which proclaimed the abolition of the
  monarchy and the establishment of the French
  republic. On January 21, 1793, it sent King Louis
  XVI, condemned to death for high treason and
  crimes against the state, to the guillotine his
  wife Marie-Antoinette (1755-1793) suffered the
  same fate nine months later.

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The Jacobins
Maximilien de Robespierre
Camille Desmoulins
To punish the oppressors of humanity is
clemency to forgive them is cruelty.
-Robespierre
Georges Danton
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The Girondins
Jacques-Pierre Brissot, a leader of the
Girondins.
It is better to make our enemy's country the
theater of war than our own.
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The Reign of Terror Continued

• D) In June 1793, the Jacobins seized control of
  the National Convention from the more moderate
  Girondins and instituted a series of radical
  measures, including the establishment of a new
  calendar and the eradication of Christianity.
  They also unleashed the bloody Reign of Terror, a
  10-month period in which suspected enemies of the
  revolution were guillotined by the thousands.
  Many of the killings were carried out under
  orders from Robespierre, who dominated the
  draconian Committee of Public Safety until his
  own execution on July 28, 1794.

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The Guillotine

• During the Reign of Terror of the mid-1790s,
  thousands of enemies of the French revolution
  met their end by the guillotines blade. Some
  members of the public initially complained that
  the machine was too quick and clinical, but
  before long the process had evolved into high
  entertainment. Spectators could buy souvenirs,
  read a program listing the names of the victims,
  or even grab a quick bite to eat at a nearby
  restaurant called Cabaret de la Guillotine.
  Public beheadings continued in France until 1939.
  It was finally abolished in France in 1981, a
  year after Ms. Glass was born! Studies on rats
  have since found that brain activity may continue
  for around four seconds after decapitation.

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VI The Rise of Napoleon

• A) On August 22, 1795, the National Convention,
  composed largely of Girondins who had survived
  the Reign of Terror, approved a new constitution
  that created Frances first bicameral
  legislature. Executive power would lie in the
  hands of a five-member Directory appointed by
  parliament. Royalists and Jacobins protested the
  new regime but were silenced by the army, now led
  by a young and successful general named Napoleon
  Bonaparte (1769-1821).
• B) The Directorys four years in power were
  riddled with financial crises, popular
  discontent, and political corruption. By the late
  1790s, the directors relied almost entirely on
  the military to maintain their authority. On
  November 9, 1799, Bonaparte staged a coup détat,
  abolishing the Directory and appointing himself
  Frances first consul. The event marked the end
  of the French Revolution and the beginning of the
  Napoleonic era.

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Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the
Citizen, 1791

• Written by journalist Olympe de Gouges
• Argued that women are equal citizens and should
  benefit from governmental reforms just as men did
• Women did gain some rights during the French
  Revolution, but these were designed for purposes
  other than liberating women.
• - Women could inherit property, but only because
  doing so weakened feudalism and reduced wealth
  among the upper classes.
• - Divorce became easier, but only to weaken the
  Churchs control over marriage.

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Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the
Citizen, 1791

• Woman, wake up the tocsin of reason is being
  heard throughout the whole universe discover
  your rights. The powerful empire of nature is no
  longer surrounded by prejudice, fanaticism,
  superstition, and lies. The flame of truth has
  dispersed all the clouds of folly and usurpation.
  Enslaved man has multiplied his strength and
  needs recourse to yours to break his chains.
  Having become free, he has become unjust to his
  companion. Oh, women, women! When will you cease
  to be blind? What advantage have you received
  from the Revolution? A more pronounced scorn, a
  more marked disdain. In the centuries of
  corruption you ruled only over the weakness of
  men. The reclamation of your patrimony, based on
  the wise decrees of nature-what have you to dread
  from such a fine undertaking? The bon mot of the
  legislator of the marriage of Cana? Do you fear
  that our French legislators, correctors of that
  morality, long ensnared by political practices
  now out of date, will only say again to you
  women, what is there in common between you and
  us? Everything, you will have to answer. If they
  persist in their weakness in putting this non
  sequitur in contradiction to their principles,
  courageously oppose the force of reason to the
  empty pretentions of superiority unite
  yourselves beneath the standards of philosophy
  deploy all the energy of your character, and you
  will soon see these haughty men, not groveling at
  your feet as servile adorers, but proud to share
  with you the treasures of the Supreme Being.
  Regardless of what barriers confront you, it is
  in your power to free yourselves you have only
  to want to.... Marriage is the tomb of trust and
  love. The married woman can with impunity give
  bastards to her husband, and also give them the
  wealth which does not belong to them. The woman
  who is unmarried has only one feeble right
  ancient and inhuman laws refuse to her for her
  children the right to the name and the wealth of
  their father no new laws have been made in this
  matter. If it is considered a paradox and an
  impossibility on my part to try to give my sex an
  honorable and just consistency, I leave it to men
  to attain glory for dealing with this matter but
  while we wait, the way can be prepared through
  national education, the restoration of morals,
  and conjugal conventions We, _____ and ______,
  moved by our own will, unite ourselves for the
  duration of our lives, and for the duration of
  our mutual inclinations, under the following
  conditions We intend and wish to make our wealth
  communal, meanwhile reserving to ourselves the
  right to divide it in favor of our children and
  of those toward whom

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Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the
Citizen, 1791

• we might have a particular inclination, mutually
  recognizing that our property belongs directly to
  our children, from whatever bed they come, and
  that all of them without distinction have the
  right to bear the name of the fathers and mothers
  who have acknowledged them, and we are charged to
  subscribe to the law which punishes the
  renunciation of one's own blood. We likewise
  obligate ourselves, in case of separation, to
  divide our wealth and to set aside in advance the
  portion the law indicates for our children, and
  in the event of a perfect union, the one who dies
  will divest himself of half his property in his
  children's favor, and if one dies childless, the
  survivor will inherit by right, unless the dying
  person has disposed of half the common property
  in favor of one whom he judged deserving. That
  is approximately the formula for the marriage act
  I propose for execution. Upon reading this
  strange document, I see rising up against me the
  hypocrites, the prudes, the clergy, and the whole
  infernal sequence. But how it my proposal
  offers to the wise the moral means of achieving
  the perfection of a happy government! . . .
  Moreover, I would like a law which would assist
  widows and young girls deceived by the false
  promises of a man to whom they were attached I
  would like, I say, this law to force an
  inconstant man to hold to his obligations or at
  least to pay an indemnity equal to his wealth.
  Again, I would like this law to be rigorous
  against women, at least those who have the
  effrontery to have reCourse to a law which they
  themselves had violated by their misconduct, if
  proof of that were given. At the same time, as I
  showed in Le Bonheur primitit de l'homme, in
  1788, that prostitutes should be placed in
  designated quarters. It is not prostitutes who
  contribute the most to the depravity of morals,
  it is the women of' society. In regenerating the
  latter, the former are changed. This link of
  fraternal union will first bring disorder, but in
  consequence it will produce at the end a perfect
  harmony.
• I offer a foolproof way to elevate the soul of
  women it is to join them to all the activities
  of man if man persists in finding this way
  impractical, let him share his fortune with
  woman, not at his caprice, but by the wisdom of
  laws. Prejudice falls, morals are purified, and
  nature regains all her rights. Add to this the
  marriage of priests and the strengthening of the
  king on his throne, and the French government
  cannot fail.

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The Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David
The three most memorable Jacobins were Georges
Danton, Maximilien Robespierre, and Jean-Paul
Marat. Because of a debilitating illness, Marat
was eventually forced to work from home. He was
assassinated (in the tub while taking a medicinal
bath) by Charlotte Corday, a Girondist
sympathizer, in July, 1793.
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HW Questions

1. Fill in the appropriate boxes for your Period 4
   Chart.
2. What were the short and long term causes of the
   French Revolution?
3. Describe the key events of the French Revolution
   including the Tennis Court Oath and the storming
   of the Bastille.
4. What human rights were expressed in the Rights of
   Man and the Rights of Woman?
5. What were the causes and consequences of the
   Reign of Terror? Could it have been avoided?
6. What led to the rise of Napoleon?
7. Compare and contrast the French and American
   Revolutions. Which do you think was more
   successful? More justified? Explain.

Secondary Sources www.history.com
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Key Vocabulary

• 1st Estate
• 2nd Estate
• 3rd Estate
• Ancien Regime
• Bastille
• Camille Desmoulins
• Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the
  Citizen
• Declaration of the Rights of Women
• Estates-General
• French Revolution
• Georges Danton
• Girondins
• Great Fear
• Guillotine
• Jacobins

• Jacques-Pierre Brissot
• King Louis XVI
• Maximilien de Robespierre
• Napoleon Bonaparte
• National Assembly
• National Constituent Assembly
• Olympe de Gouges
• Queen Marie Antoinette
• Reign of Terror
• Tennis Court Oath
• The Directory