Pre-Revolution France

• right now, it’s an absolutist monarchy where Louis XIV has hella power

  • he basically bankrupts France by spending a lot of money in sponsoring war

    • ex: american revolution

• Louis XVI is a pretty crappy monarch who was kinda bad for a monarch

• Estates General

  • legislative body that is convened by the king, he hasn’t convened it in almost 200 years

• wealth concentrated in

  • aristocracy

  • church

• the aristocracy collects the taxes and everyone else pays

• people pay a lot in taxes because they need lots of money cause they’re spending a lot on sponsoring war and stuff

  • VERY UNEQUAL SOCIETY

  • lots of people starting and stuff

Heading into Revolution

• the bourgeuise (middle class) Enlightenment thinkers!

• keep in mind:

  • aristocracy is really out of touch (they’re really out of touch from society)

  • louis xiv is kinda unfit to be king (which the middle class lads are realizing) and he’s only king cuz of his last name

Crash Course: French Revolution

1. Who did not have to pay taxes?

   1. the people with the money (nobles and clergy) never paid taxes

   2. king louis xvi was spending half of his budget to pay for the federal debt

   3. all attempts to fix debts were so bad that france was basically bankrupt

   4. remember that the monarchs were like super rich and stuff

   5. louis’s wife (marie antoinette) was so detached from society that she would play milkmaid (mimicking the poor people in society)

2. Why was France in debt?

   1. they funded for a lot of wars (ex. american revolution)

3. What natural disasters hit at the same time as the debt?

   1. food shortage; hailstorm

4. Who was the King of France? The Queen? 

   1. king louis xvi

   2. marie antoinette

5. How was the Enlightenment challenging “divine right”?

   1. it challenged the notion that the monarchs ruled because god said so; a government should be by the people for the people!

6. What did Louis call? Who is in each of the estates? 

   1. louis called a meeting with the estates general in response to the crisis

      1. first estate → clergy (Church people)

         1. catholic, bishops, priests- make up the leadership of the church

      2. second estate → aristocracy/nobility

         1. people with titles

      3. third estate → everyone else in france

   2. they havent called the estates in over 200 years so its been a while

   3. the estate counts as one vote, so the third estate doesn’t get that much representation in reality (even though they have so many people)

7. What did the Third Estate form? 

   1. the normal people of France

8. What is the gist of the Tennis Court Oath?

   1. they swore not to give up until a new french constitution was established

9. How did this “revolution” spread to Paris? 

   1. king louis sent troops to paris to help stop uprisings over food shortages, but the revolutionaries saw this as provocation

10. What was the radical move by the National Assembly?

    1. after freeing the prison bastille and getting some guns, they declared the end of the regime meaning an end to unequal taxation

    2. they created the declaration of the rights of man and citizen

11. What did the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen promise? How was it different than the Bill of Rights in the US?

    1. it promised certain rights for every citizen and it was different because it was INTEGRATED into the constitution (bill of rights was just added on to the end)

    2. everyone had the right to liberty, property, and security

12. What caused the Women’s March on Versailles? What was the immediate effect? 

    1. a rumor started that marie antoinette was hoarding grain in her palace so a bunch of peasant women marched on her palace and demanded they move to paris (so they did)

13. To most people, the French Revolution was about WHAT rather than Enlightenment ideas? 

    1. it was about lack of food and a political system that made economic issues hardest on the poor

14. Who was the most radical wing, who called for a Republic? 

    1. the Jacobins; nat assembly just wanted a constitutional monarchy

    2. the national assembly were the jacobins’ opps; they fired on the jacobins so they could reign in terms of revoluntaire-ness; so you had multiple revolutionary groups fighting for power and control

15. Why were Prussia and Austria “nervous”? What was the Declaration of Pillnitz? 

    1. Leopold II (Marie Antoinette’s brother) and King William Frederick II of Prussia were getting nervous about the fact that France was probably gonna become a Republic and they wanted to keep their jobs as monarchs

    2. The Declaration promised to restore the French monarch

16. What happened to the king of France? 

    1. basically the French decided to invade Austria and Prussia joined in in helping Austria fight the French

       1. he wanted to invade them to plunder some of their money and food supplies

    2. then, Louis encouraged Prussia’s fighting so it looked like he was an enemy of the revolution (which he was) so they suspended the monarchy and created a new election where everybody could vote for the leader so long as they were men and so they created a new republican constitution

    3. then they had a trial for louis xvi and he was found guilty and then sentenced to death via guillotine → made it hard for prussia and austria to restore him to the throne

17. How is the guillotine an effect of the Enlightenment? 

    1. they said that the guillotine was an egalitarian way of killing people

18. What was the Terror? Who (group and person) ran the Reign of Terror? 

    1. ran by Maximilien Robespierre and the Jacobians

    2. they guillotined thousands of people who were “enemies of the revolution”

19. Why did the measurement of time changed? 

    1. they changed the measurements of time because the traditional ones were so “rational” and “religion-y”

20. Who was Napoleon Bonaparte? 

    1. after the reign of terror they put another constitution into place that gave a lot more power to wealthy people

    2. france was still at war with austria and prussia which they ended up winning thanks to napoleon bonaparte

    3. at the last coup of the french government in 1799, under a new constitution napoleon bonaparte was officially established as the First Consul of France under a new constitution

21. How was the French Revolution NOT revolutionary?

    1. napoleon was basically an emperor and in some ways even more absolutist than Louis XVI

    2. didn’t bring democracy to france

22. How WAS the French Revolution revolutionary? (esp. compared to the American Revolution)

    1. its ideals were very universal

       1. for example, they said that their laws should come from citizens (not from God) and should apply to everyone equally

    2. asked questions about the nature of people’s rights and the derivation of those rights

       1. what are our rights?

       2. are they derived from nature? god? neither?

       3. are rights of the people or for the people?

clergy → do not want change

national assembly → they want change! they’re okay with some civil rights, a bill of rights, constitutional monarchy, and stuff like that

• they’re fine with taking things slowly

jacobins → they want EXTREME change

• they want a republic or something

ALL of them are competing for power

• the jacobins and national assembly had some beef