His 102 chapter 18 the french revolution part i fall 2013

1788-1792 a constitutional struggle

Increasingly bold elites articulated grievances against the king

1792-1794 acute crisis, consolidation, repression

Centralized government mobilized country’s resources to fight invading armies

1794-1799 a republic without leadership

Undermined by corruption and internal division, France maintained its Republic until the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte

1799-1815 Napoleon’s Rule & Defeat

Republic to Empire to defeat and restoration of the Monarchy

France’s social classes determined legal rights and taxes

1st Estate: Clergy (no taxes, few obligations)

2nd Estate: Nobility (minimal taxes, few individual rights)

by 18th century noble titles could be purchased

50,000 new nobles created between 1700-1789

Much middle class wealth transferred to noble wealth

Less wealthy nobles resented the “Nouveau Rich”

Social boundaries between nobility and wealthy merchants of 3rd estate were ill defined

Bourgeoise considered themselves much different than people who worked with their hands

3rd Estate: Everybody else (majority of taxes, no rights)

Wide gap between very wealthy merchants who were not nobility but who copied their mannerisms and poor, landless urban laborers and rural peasants

Tensions between those who had bought titles and those who could not afford to buy titles

Causes

Social boundaries between noble and non-noble ill-defined

From bourgeois wealth to noble wealth

Most noble wealth was proprietary—tied to land

Influx of new wealth from banking, shipping, slave trade, and mining

Identified with the nobility, not the common people

Prosperous members of the Third Estate aired their frustrations in public debate

Causes

The articulation of discontent

Locke, Voltaire, and Montesquieu appeal to discontented nobles and middle class

Economic reform

Simplify tax system

Free the economy from mercantilist restrictions

Government should lift controls (subsidies) on price of grain

Enlightenment changed public debate

Enlightenment ideas played a critical role in articulating grievances between social classes

Enlightenment ideals appealed to nobles, middle class and poor alike even though ideas about how those ideals would be applied varied greatly among the social classes

Reform of government to provide checks and balances to power of the king

Reform of economy to eliminate mercantilism and fairer tax system

Suffrage for whom???

Clergy was frightened of Enlightenment Ideals because they feared losing power and privileged position, perhaps even property

Peasants caught in web of obligations to church (tithe), landlords (rent, taxes) and state (taxes and work)

Sales taxes

Head tax

Price Controls angered everyone and when Louis XVI attempted to eliminate certain price controls the burden fell most heavily on the peasants and urban poor

1780’s poor harvests = soaring bread prices (poor urban laborers and peasants survived mostly on bread)

1788: 50% of income spent on bread

1789: 80% of income spent on bread

Peasants who left the countryside to find work in the cities remained unemployed

1787-1789 unemployment in some urban centers was at 50%

Bread Riots occurred throughout the country in the Spring of 1789

Taxation

Tied to social class

Varied from region to region

Spending

Louis XIV spent extraordinary sums to maintain his lifestyle and engage in the wars in Europe

Louis XV spent large amount of money when France entered the American Revolutionary War on the side of the colonists

When Louis XVI attempted to raise taxes on the nobility, they seized the opportunity to demand that he call the Estates-General into session

Louis XVI

This image chronicles a riot. Many believe it was caused by artisans who attacked the Reveillon wallpaper shopand factory because they believed that the owner was about to lower wages. Over two days, more than 6,000attacked the place. On 28 April 1789 troops were called and fired on the crowd. The official report noted 71 killed, wounded, or detained. This conflict reveals the animosity between the artisans and authorities as well as divisions between commoner owners and artisans that would eventually turn the Third Estate against itself.

1789 Estates-General called by Louis XVI in May 1789 (Last called in 1626)

Traditionally 1st and 2nd Estates voted together to defeat the 3rd Estate

3rd Estate deputies argued that individual votes of each member should be counted and that the size of the 3rd Estate be increased to give commoners an equal voice

King agreed but nobles protested

Abbe Sieyes, “What is the Third Estate?”

King alarmed by pamphlet’s violent language withdrew his support for 3rd Estate

3rd Estate deputies left the body and declared themselves to be the “National Assembly”

King locked deputies out of the meeting hall on June 20, 1789

Deputies met at nearby tennis court and took “The Tennis Court Oath”

National Assembly claimed the authority to remake the French government in the name of the people

June 20, 1789 Swore an oath not to disband until France had a Constitution

June 27, 1789 King ordered all delegates to join the National Assembly

Tennis Court Oath

The public (mostly people from the 3rd Estate)

Rumors:

aristocracy and King conspiring to punish the 3rd Estate by creating conditions of scarcity and high prices for basic necessities (commoners= sans culottes) .

King had called on outside forces to help put down the rebellion

Storming of the Bastille 14 July 1789

Great Fear

October Days of 1789

Rumors in Paris: King’s troops mobilizing to march on the city.

Electors (people who had enough money to vote) organized the people into a militia and organized a provisional municipal government

Storming the Bastille: July 14, 1789 --large crowd stormed the Bastille intending to obtain arms for the city’s defense

Governor of the Bastille ordered his men to shoot into the crowd, killing 98 people

The crowd captured the Bastille, attacked the governor and chopped off his head

Rumors in the countryside: Austrians, Prussians or “brigands” were invading France

Peasants organized militias

Attacked manor houses for food,

Looted records of manorial rents/dues

Burned estates

Parisian women from the market district, angered by the soaring price of bread marched to Versailles on October 5 and demanded to be heard

Not satisfied by the response of the National Assembly, crowd broke through the gates at Versailles demanding that the King return to Paris

On October 6, the King agreed

Agreement weakened King’s ability to resist further changes demanded by the National Assembly

Storming the Bastille: caused the King and the Nobility to agree to create the National Assembly

Great Fear caused National Assembly abolish feudal privileges

Church tithe

Labor requirement (corvee)

peasants must give landlord or the crown days of labor in return for privilege of renting a plot to farm

Noble hunting privileges and tax exemptions

Sale of offices

October Days demonstrated that even the King was subject to the will of the people

In late July 1789, as reports poured into Paris from the countryside of several thousand separate yet relatedpeasant mobilizations, a majority of them against seigneurial property, the deputies of the National Assemblydebated reforming not just the fiscal system or the constitution but the very basis of French society. In a dramatic all–night session on 4–5 August deputies stepped forward, one after another, to renounce for the good of the "nation" the particular privileges enjoyed by their town or region

Passive citizens: those who could not vote but retained certain natural rights

Active Citizens: paid taxes and could hold office and vote

About 50% of men in France qualified as “Active Citizens”

Indirect representation: Voted for Electors whose property ownership entitled them to hold office

Religious Toleration—meant an end to persecution but not accommodation of religious differences

Abolished serfdom and slavery in continental France

"Active Citizen/Passive Citizen"This cartoon mocks the distinction between active and passive citizens. Many revolutionaries hated this difference, essentially dividing those with property from those without. The propertied (active) were the only ones who could participate in the political process.

“Liberty, Equality,Fraternity: ExploringThe French Revolution”http://chnm.gmu.edu

Women were active in French Revolution

Joined clubs and held debates

Participated in demonstrations

circulation of news

Marie Gouze aka Olympe de Gouges

Declaration of the Rights of Women and the Citizen (1791)

Social distinctions based only on common utility

Women had same rights as men to resist authority and participate in government

Women had the right to name the fathers of illegitimate children

Divorce legalized in 1792

November 1789: Confiscated all church lands

1790: enacted Civil Constitution of the Clergy, bringing church under state authority

Bishops and priests had to swear allegiance to the state

Intended to make Catholic Church of France free from interference by Rome

Pope threatened to excommunicate all Bishops or Priests who signed the Civil Constitution

In Roman Catholic faith, excommunication meant damnation

Caused rift in the countryside between loyal Roman Catholics and Republican supporters of the Revolution. People were forced to choose.

Abolition of guilds

Reorganized local governments into 83 equal departments

Sold off church lands to those who could afford them

Who did benefit from the reforms?

The counterrevolution

Outside France

Austria and Prussia declared support for French monarchy (August 1791)

April 20, 1792: the National Assembly declared war on Austria and Prussia

Radicals hoped the war would expose “traitors”

Summer of 1792: Leaders of the Revolution were toppled by the Jacobins

Republicans: repudiated monarchy and claimed to rule on behalf of a sovereign people

Why did Revolution turn radical inside France?

Politicization of the public

Shortages of bread

Runaway inflation

Press & Rumors

Crisis of leadership

Queen plotting with her brother, King Leopold II of Austria to stop the revolution

King forced to support changes that he did not like

Queen convinced King to flee France in June 1791 but the Royal family was captured at the border and returned to Paris where they were held under house arrest at Tuileries Palace.

The Tuileries Palace

Elected by “free white men” in September 1792

1. September Massacres

2. Declared France a Republic

3. Tried King in December

4. Executed King in January 1793

5. Confiscated property of Enemies of the Revolution

6. Repealed primogeniture

7. Abolished slavery in Colonies

8. Set maximum prices for grain

9. Year 1, September 22, 1792

•All Europeans took a side in the conflict•Political societies outside of France declared loyalty to the Revolution•Elites, Monarchs and Aristocracy feared destruction of the order of society

The French Republic

Military reforms

France faced Britain, Holland, Spain, and Austria (February 1793)

French revolutionary armies

The revolutionary government drafted all men capable of bearing arms (August 1793)

French military successes

Low Countries, Rhineland, Switzerland, parts of Spain, and Savoy

The Execution of Louis XVI

1. 1793 National Convention drafted a new Constitution

2. Suspended indefinitely because of war

3. Due to War Emergency National Convention delegated authority to Committee of Public Safety

Committee faced sabotage from the political left and rightSeptember 1793–July 1794: executions as high as twenty-five to thirty thousandThree hundred thousand incarcerated between March 1793 and August 1794

The Reign of Terror

Committee faced sabotage from the political left and right

Jean-Paul Marat (1743–1793)Opposed moderates

Edited The Friend of the PeopleKilled by Charlotte Corday, a royalist (summer 1793)

Georges-Jacques Danton (1759–1794)

Popular political leaderMember of the CPSWearied of the TerrorSent to the guillotine (April 1794)

Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794)

Trained as a lawyerBecame president of the National ConventionMember of the CPSEnlarged the Terror

The legacy of the second French Revolution

The sans-culottes

Workers’ trousers replaced breeches

The red cap of liberty

Citizen and citizeness

Festivals Mobilization for revolutionCounterrevolutionary groups were also popular movements