VCE French Revolutions

Power of the Church and Nobility

The nobility were distinguished by their wealth, and their power in society. The church was also very powerful in France, especially in the time of the Revolution.

Hostility of foreign powers

The French declared war on Austria and Prussia in 1792.

The Papacy

The office of the pope.

Scale of the reforms envisaged by the Revolution

The people of the French Revolution mainly dreamed of the end of the monarchy, and the equality of the estates.

Economic challenges

Inflation, unemployment, famine and starvation were at an all time high, and many industries were also destroyed.

The outbreak and course of war

April 1792 - France declare war on Austria. Austria was apparently giving protection to French rebels (were also preparing to invade France). France, but mainly Louis XVI, hoped that the war would break the Austria-Prussia allience. Louis also supported the war because he thought he would get the throne back if France lost.

The abolition of absolute monarchy and privileged corporations

The absolute monarchy was essentially destroyed when Louis XVI was executed on January 21, 1793. Privileged corporations also began declining when the New Regime began.

Changes to taxes

The taxes were upped to get more money to get out of debt.

Reforms to the church

In the Ancien Regime, the Church was highly influential, but when the New Regime was introduced, the Church lost its power. It had to sell its land, and priests either had to resign or were punished (probs execution).

Louis XVI

King of France during the French Revolution.

Georges Danton

French revolutionary leader who stormed the Paris bastille and who supported the execution of Louis XVI but was guillotined by Robespierre for his opposition to the Reign of Terror (1759-1794)

Jean-Paul Marat

A journalist and scientist, as well as an associate Jacobin; Marat (1743-93) helped launch the Reign of Terror and complied death lists, being an advocate of violent measures. He was stabbed to death in his bath by Charlotte Corday, immortalised in the David painting The Death of Marat.

Maximilien Robespierre

Revolutionary leader who tried to wipe out every trace of France's past monarchy and nobility.

Marquis de Lafayette

He was elected to the Estates-General in 1789, and appointed the first commander of the National Guard in July of that year. He also helped found the Feuillant club in 1791

Bourgeoisie

The middle class, including merchants, industrialists, and professional people.

Urban workers

The poorest members of the Third Estate.

Peasants

People who worked the land or served the nobles

The nobility

The Second Estate in France.

Émigrés

French men and women, usually of noble birth, who fled France during the Revolution

Peasant

Members of the third estate who lived and worked in the country, engaged in agricultural work. Some were wealthy whereas many were poor sharecroppers that did not own enough land for a living and would often rent it.

Artisans

Workers who were trained and skilled in some trade in small towns and villages. eg. barrel making, glass making.

Lower clergy

Parish priests and assistants

Tithe

Tax between 8-10% of people's income, or their value of livestock. This was paid to the local catholic priest.

Noblesse d'epee

Older 'nobility of the sword'

Noblesse de robe

More recent 'nobility of the cloth', judiciary, bought titles, arch bishops etc etc, "new" nobility

Bourgeoisie

People of the third estate who lived in towns, owned property and engaged in trade, industry or the professions. Bourgeois = bourg. burg = castle, borough, burgher, Bürgermeister (mayor), "belonging to or characteristic of the middle class, typically with reference to its perceived materialistic values or conventional attitudes."

Feudal dues

Extra payments of money, food or labour to the nobles

Nobles

Members of the second estate who were wealthy and controlled most of the important public positions. They did not pay general tax and dominated the highest adminisitrative posts in government and the church

Enlightenment

Intellectual movement of the 17th-18th centuries emphasising reason & individualism rather than tradition and the French Monarchy

Philosophie

During the Enlightenment: The system of ideas, emphasising science, progress and reason to create a more humane world.

Philosophe

Critical thinkers, writers who highlighted reason. Examples: Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu

Subversive

Designed to overthrow a government/other institution

Ferment

Stir up somebody/something

Religious Orthodoxy

The idea that one religion can be declared 'right' and all others 'wrong'

Representation

The political idea that people cannot be expected to obey laws for which they have not voted

Seditious

Involving rebellion against a government/other authority

Reason

Think, understand and judgement logically

Encyclopaedia

French work of Diderot published in the 18th century and distinguished by its representation of the views of the enlightenment

Convoked

Called together for a large formal meeting

Dossiers

Sets of papers containing information

Suffrage

The right to vote

Tax farmers

Private tax collectors

Aristocratic revolt

The privileged others resisted the royal governments attempts at fiscal (tax) reforms

Taxation by representation

Taxes that have been discussed and approved by the elected representatives of the people who are going to have to pay these taxes

No taxation without representation

The king could not impose taxes without approval by representatives such as the Estates-General

Perpetual taxes

Taxes occurring over and over

Inviolability

That which is unable to be breached or broken

Lettres de cachet

Letters or order signed by the King of France and closed with the Royal seal

Corveé

Under the old regime, a labour tax paid by working people

Gabelle

During the old regime, a tax on salt, an item crucial to working people for preserving food and for the care of farm animals

Compte rendu

Jacques Necker's 'national account', which cleverly hid the true nature of France's crippling national debt, thus delaying by five years the inevitable process of trying to resolve it by reform of taxation.

Cahiers de doléances

As part of the electoral process in France in 1789, these lists of grievances were drawn up by members of each of the three estates to inform and instruct the deputies of local views and authorize reform. They generally called for the limitation of royal power and greater tax equity.

Venal public office

The legal purchase of public office, often with a noble title attached, by wealthy and ambitious bourgeois who wanted to rise into the second estate

Absolute monarchy

A political system in which the monarch rules personally, without being accountable to an elected parliament

Privileges

Special rights in the matter of law and taxation

Literal meaning: Privi + lege = Private Law

Honorific

A certain type of privilege eg. nobles right to carry a sword

Fiscal concessions

Privileges relating to taxes

Legal concessions

Privileges relating to law

Pragmatism

A practical way of thinking about things

Martyred

When someone is killed for refusing to deny a strong belief

Propertied classes

Those who own property

Mercenaries

Professional soldiers who are paid to fight

National guard

A force made up of reliable bourgeois citizens to protect private property

Militia

A fighting force made up of non-professional soldiers

Democratisation

The process of opening up politics to ordinary people who had previously not been able to participate in the political life of the nation

Tumult

Noisy commotion

Menu Peuple

French for "the common people"

Three estates

1st estate = Clergy (approx 0.6%)

2nd estate = Nobility (approx 0.4%)

3rd estate = The Commons (the rest!)

Feudal / Feudalism

A de-centralised medieval social system of personal obligations between rulers (in the past: nobles, knights) and ruled (peasants).

In the middle ages, this meant that the peasants paid taxes to the lords (seigneurs in France) in exchange for services and protection. This system had devolved by the late 18th century as many nobles lived far away from their old feudal lands and had little connection to the people there.

Parlement

The High courts. A parlement in the Ancien Régime of France, was a provincial appeal court. In 1789, France had 13 parlements, the most important of which was the Parlement of Paris. While the English word parliament derives from this French term, parlements were not legislative bodies.

Ancien Regime

"old regime" or "former regime". However, most English language books use the French term Ancien Régime. The term first appeared in print in English in 1794, and was originally pejorative in nature.

Seigneur

a noble landlord under the feudal system

American War of Independence

1775-1783

- TURGOT - finance minister: 'The first shot will drive the State to bankruptcy' - about war.

Cost the country 4,000,000 livres and large death toll. Gained nothing for France.

- "cost France one billion French Pounds...spending 37.5% of its revenue just repaying interest on the debt." - Judy Anderson

- Schama - believes the revolution was caused solely because of the American War

Enlightenment

1740's

A movement in the 18th century that advocated the use of reason in the reappraisal of accepted ideas and social institutions.

Albert Soboul on The Enlightenment

"The Enlightenment undermined the ideological foundations of the established order"

Friction between monarchy and Parlements

- 'It is legal because I will it' - Louis XVI.

- The Parlements considered that the King was dictating to them, and refused to obey the King.

- 1st phase of revolution according to George Lefebvre (aristocratic revolution)

Noble Privileges

- 'Nobility was a club which every wealthy man felt entitled, indeed obliged, to join. Not all nobles were rich, but sooner to later, all rich ended up noble.' - William Doyle

Peasant Grievances

-Feudal dues, harsh taxes, noble privileges.

- Historian Peter Mcphee estimates that peasants paid on average a total of 25-33% of their wealth to the monarchy, church and their feudal lord.

Cahiers de Doleances

March - April 1789

- statements of local grievances drafted throughout France during the elections to the Estates-General, generally advocating a regular constitutional government abolishing fiscal privileges of the church and nobility.

- "many members of the nobility and clergy also supported radical ideas - such as admitting fiscal privilege is wrong and that appointment by merit rather than birth was fair." - George Taylor

Louis XVI

- Christopher Hibbert - 'The new King, Louis XVI, was 19 years old. Although kind and generous by nature, his manner was usually brusque, cold and formal, marked by fits of ill humour and sharp retorts..'

Political Pamphlets

The pamphlets released in October 1788 to July 1789

When censorship was relaxed (1788) the market was flooded with thousands of political pamphlets, the most influential being Abbé Sieyes' "What is the Third Estate?" (January 1789)

William Doyle on What is the Third Estate

Abbe Sieyes pamphlet made the Third Estate 'more radical'

The harvest crisis

1788-1789

"Hunger, hope and fear were the main ingredients of the rural crisis of 1789"- William doyle

"The [national] deficit would not have caused the Revolution [without] the price of bread." - Arthur Young

February 1781

Compte rendu au roi

Necker False account

- stating France had 10 Billion livres over expenditure.

Dismissal of Necker

11 July 1789

' Louis' exasperation with Necker's self-righteousness had grown into something close to detestation when he had been upstaged by the Minister on June 23 [Seance Royal]' - Schama

Attack on 'ministerial despotism'

- The defiance of the Notables signified the beginning of the Aristocratic Revolt.

- FIRST WAVE OF THE REVOLUTION - MARXIST HISTORIAN - GEORGES LEFEVRE.

Critique of privilege

'Where the richest class is the least taxed; where privilege prevents all stability; where neither a constant rule nor a common will is possible, [since] such state is inevitably a very imperfect kingdom, full of corrupt practices and impossible to govern well.' - Calonne

4 August 1789

Night of Patriotic Delirium

5-11 August 1789

August Decrees

26 August 1789

Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen

Simon Schama on the Night of Patriotic Delirium

'stripped themselves down to the happy nakedness of citizenship.'

Claims To Popular Sovereignty and Equality

20 June 1789

Tennis Court Oath - 'a solemn oath not to separate' 'until the constitution of the Kingdom is established'

- "...having won its victory over "privilege" and "despotism", the Bourgeois now wanted peace and quiet in order to proceed with its task of giving France a constitution." - George Rudé

5-6 October 1789

October Days, the women of the Paris fish markets marched to Versailles with the aim of killing Marie-Antoinette. Brought the Royal Family back to the Tuileries in Paris

- "The Revolution of the Bourgeois deputies had only been secured by the active intervention of the people of Paris."- Peter Mcphee

27 April 1789

Reveillon Riots

- 25 people killed.

- 'From the first year it was apparent that violence was to just an unfortunate side effect from which enlightened Patriots could selectively avert their eyes; it was the Revolution's source of collective energy. It was what made the Revolution revolutionary.' - Schama.

July 14 1789

Storming of the Bastille

- "[the storming of the bastille] was the climax of the popular movement."- Schama

- "[The Parisians] would see themselves as the guardians of the liberty won that day." - William Doyle

Gwynne Lewis on the Bastille

"The Parisian crowd...reminding deputies...the bullet is as important as the ballot."

20 July - 6 August 1789

The Great Fear: the panic and insecurity that struck French peasants after the fall of Bastille and led to their widespread destruction of manor houses and archives.

- "'[The Great Fear was] 'a belief that the nobility were plotting to destroy the Revolution" - Georges Lefebvre

- "[the Great Fear] allowed the peasants to realise their strength." - Henri Lefebvre

Abbe Sieyes

Wrote an essay called "What is the 3rd estate" Argued that lower classes were more important than the nobles and the government should be responsible to the people. Member of the first Estates-General.

Duc d'Orleans

Louis XVI's cousin; celebrated for his support of enlightened ideas.

Mirabeau

leader of the early stages of the French Revolution. A noble, he was involved in numerous scandals before the start of the Revolution in 1789 that had left his reputation in ruins