XI. The French Revolution

A. Social Structure: Old Regime

  • 18th century: population increased 45% (26 million)

    • More food → more newborns

    • Young population → susceptible to revolution

  • 1st Estate (1%)

    • Clergy owned 10% of land

    • Exempt from tax

    • Radically divided socially

  • 2nd Estate (4-5%)

    • Nobility owned 25-30% of land

    • Dominated bureaucracy (money making)

    • Industry

    • Exempt from tax

    • Robe: status via officeholding (courts/admin offices)

    • Sword: extend privileges at expense of monarchy

  • 3rd Estate (95%)

    • Everyone else

    • Peasants (75-80%): hated landlord obligations and noble priveleges

    • Skilled Craftsman (10%): grieved against inflation (bread prices)

    • Unskilled/Unemployed

    • Bourgeoisie (8%): 25% of land, controlled trade/manufacturing, resented noble privilege

  • Be careful not to lump people from each estate with each other. Each estate represents a range of people with a range of privilege and economic status

B. Trouble Brewing

  • Bad harvest, unemployment, inflation, food shortages → economic disaster

    • Worst winter in centuries

    • Laying people off

    • Increasing prices

  • Parlements: could block royal edicts (taxes)

    • Supreme Court equivalent of France

  • 1778-1787 Depression: grain/wine price markup 55%, inflation, government expenditures increased by war (American Revolution), no bank

  • Private lenders refused to loan anymore (French debt = billions)

  • Financial collapse → calling Estates General (May 1789)

    • Last meeting 1614

    • Previously, absolutist kings did not want to call the Estates General

C. National Assembly Formed

  • 3rd Estate Delegates at Estates General: young, urban, hated privilege

  • Cahiers de doleances: grievances distributed during delegate elections

  • Parlement of Paris: ruled to vote by order, not head (one vote per estate)

    • Outrages democratic 3rd estaters

    • Some people in the 1st and 2nd estate lay down their titles to join 3rd

  • June 1789: 3rd Estate breaks away from Estate General, forming National Assembly

    • Designated a constitutional monarchy

  • Tennis Court Oath: will not leave without a constitution; Louis XVI threatens

  • Commoners side with 3rd estate movement

    • Beheaded governor (leader of Bastille), ripped building apart brick by brick

    • Bastille held debt prisoners, symbol of privilege and held weapons

    • Louis eventually capitulates

  • July-August 1789: Agrarian peasant revolts

    • Rural issues ongoing as urban stuff is happening

    • Frustration over bread prices, etc.

Sidenote: Political Ideology Continuum

  • Conservatives (Absolutism)

  • Moderates (Constitutional Monarchy)

  • Radicals (Republicanism)

D. Moderate Action

  • Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen

    • Sort of like the Bill of Rights

    • Granted liberty

    • Ended (some) privileges, angering conservatives

    • Freedom of speech, press

    • Feminist movement to include women

  • Poissarde march to Versailles; forced Louis XVI to move to Paris

    • “Fish ladies” of the revolution with starving children

    • March to Versailles from Paris

    • Marching against bread prices; Louis hoarded grains

    • Gains more followers as they moved

    • Forced a change: Louis becomes a prisoner of Paris…

  • Civil Constitution of the Clergy

    • Demanding priests sign a constitution

    • Seemed like putting something above God

    • 54% took the oath

    • Others were seen as counterrevolutionaries

    • First Estate becomes suspicious in the eyes of revolutionaries

    • Church land confiscated

    • Bishops/priests elected

    • Intelligentsia eventually make France so secular that Christianity was outlawed…

  • Constitution of 1791: Limited monarch, Legislative Assembly, Indirect elections

    • Indirect elections = 25 or older and tax paying to vote

  • Abolished provinces, dividing France into departments (83)

    • Which were divided into districts/communes (Rousseauean)

E. Internal Opposition (Saboteurs)

  • Clerics angered at the oath

  • Lower class angered at inflation and rising costs of living

  • Peasants: dues (rent to use land from Middle Ages) that still existed

  • Political Clubs (Jacobins): waffling between moderation and radicalism

    • Mountains (Radicals): served in National Assembly

    • Girondons (Moderate-Radicals)

  • June 1971: Louis was caught trying to flee France

    • Increased radicalism

    • Louis seen as counterrevolutionary

F. Outside Opposition

  • October 1791: Legislative Assembly demanded foreign powers to return emigres (nobels related to Louis that emigrated out of France) back to France; Louis vetos

  • Austria/Prussia issued Declaration of Pillnitz backed Louis

    • Outrages French revolutionaries

  • January 1792: Legislative Assembly demanded all emigres from HRE returned

  • Leopold II (Austrian emperor) refused → French declaration of war on 20 April 1792

  • Early defeats + shortages = radicalism against Louis

    • Suspicion against Marie Antoinette for being a saboteur (helping her homeland HRE)

  • August 1792: Louis captured, monarchy suspended

  • National Convention (republic) formed on universal suffrage

  • Paris Commune dominated by sans-culottes took control

    • Makes government more radical

    • Francophiles, Anglophiles, etc.

imagine if you got a source in the american revolution and the source is from a loyalist, not a patriot (lot of people screwed up), kids wanted to write the conservatives didnt want to start a revolution