The French Revolution (AP EURO)

Causes of the French Revolution:

• Bourgeoisie had all the economic power, but all political power was to the nobles

• Absolutism: not flexible. Louis XIV doesn’t want change.

  • Cardinal Richelieu

  • England vs. France

• Unsystematic form of tax collection

  • 1st and 2nd don’t pay taxes

  • Tax farming. Parlements (nobles) don’t want to tax themselves

• The American Revolution

  • Funding for US enlightenment ideas - France doesn’t even have

  • Fighting for the stuff France doesn’t have!

• Reputation of Marie Antoinette

  • Blamed for being Austrian (not French) and spending all the money (false)

  • Affair of the Necklace, was blamed, not related to her

  • Symbolizes French problems

• Debt from War (seven years war + american revolution)

  • 50% of all French tax money going to interest and loans

• Old Regime system (estates)

  • Clergy + church still have power. Nobility

  • Third estate - 98%. Banalities (where nobles get shares when the third estate uses communal things like the mill, winepress, etc.)

• Enlightenment Ideas: ROUSSEAU

• Bread

  • Hiding things like cow dung in brown bread

  • No just price!

• Short term causes:

  • Bad harvests 1787-89, wheat price up by 1.66x

  • Unemployment: 50% in Paris

  • Government Bankruptcy

    • 4 Billion livre in debt ($40B today)

The Estates General was gonna fail because

• King only wants money.

• The changed voting system (doubling the third not by points but by people, instead of vote by head) didn’t do anything

  • The third estate is mad

Tennis Court Oath:

• The Third Estate swore in a tennis court that they won’t give up until they are a representative republic and given a Constitution

• It was a popular rebellion against the king

• Created the National Assembly because they were locked out of Estates General

• Considered the beginning of the French Revolution.

Fall of Bastille and the Great Fear:

• The Fall of Bastille showed the Parisian Mob becoming a political force

  • Showed anger towards unequal system and violent nature of the Revolution

• Forced the king to celebrate with them on the fall of Bastille

• Great Fear: People panic, afraid of what the king will do.

  • Peasant uprisings in the countryside, destroying feudal documents and refusing to pay feudal dues.

  • Took possession of land, nobles were too scared to fight back.

• Paris also had bad troops (bad defense)

Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen:

• Written by the National Assembly to establish equal rights for all men

• Overhauls the old system: Death of the Old Regime.

• Provided foundations of the ideas people wanted

  • Ideas from Enlightenment and America

• Affirmed rights of men: liberty, property, security, resistance to oppression

• Called for change in tax system and freedom and equal rights to all (men)

  • Destruction of aristocratic privileges

• Citizens have the authority to have high positions in government

• Monarchy was restricted: citizens have right to be part of legislative process

• Freedom of speech, press, outlawing arbitrary arrests

• Decided women don’t get equal rights (Olympe the Gouge was ignored)

• It was very radical for supporting a representative system:

  • All equal, sovereignty reflects the nation, law = general will, freedom of speech/press, rights of man. Used to justify terror.

  • IT WILL SPREAD over the world and become a beacon of hope

Liberal/Moderate Phase (Phase 1)

• The Civil Constitution of the Clergy:

  • Clergy were elected by people and had to swear an oath

  • Only 54% swore the oath: opposition from the Church

  • A blunder by the National Convention by making the Church enemy

• 1791 Constitution: established a constitutional monarchy

  • 745 represented selected by rich people

  • Only people who payed the most taxes could vote

• Abolition of provinces and division into department:

  • Power given to bourgeoisie over territories

  • Feudal territories gone.

  • Supervised by elected officials

• Jacobins:

  • Radical political debate club

  • 900 jacobins

  • Mostly bourgoisies and artisans

• Flight to Varennes:

  • King ditches paris but fails.

  • Makes his image disloyal to the state

  • Gets put on trial for treason

  • Radicals want king gone(dead), but national assembly ignored

• Legislative Assembly: 

  • Successor of the national assembly

  • Mostly consisted of lawyers

  • King tried to work along, but because of bad foreign relationships, Louis is sentenced to death

  • Sans-culottes: power passed to the ordinary urban poor patriots

  • Paris commune created.

• War on Austria 1792:

  • Emigre nobles kept ditching France to Austria. 

  • The assembly tells Austria to give the nobles back, but Leopold II of Austria refused

  • Legislative assembly declares war on Austria

• Brunswick manifesto:

  • Austria and Prussia wrote to France that if they harmed the royal family, civilians would be harmed.

• August 1792, the king gets taken captive by radical parisian groups, and forces the legislative assembly to abolish the monarchy.

• March to Versailles:

  • Women sans-culottes march to versailles, demanding bread and just price, as well as the king to come to paris

  • Royal family had to stay in prison and accept the national assembly laws as the people’s prisoners.

• Olympe de Gouges: 

  • A play writer and pamphleteer woman who wrote the DOROWAFC( declaration of rights of women and female citizen)

  • Doromac excluded women

  • Gets ignored by the national assembly

  • Advocated for equal rights for women (ignorance of women’s right is the cause of corruption)

• Revolutionary Republican Women:

  • Working class women who called themselves family of sisters and defenders of the fatherland

  • Created by actress and chocolate maker 1793

  • Men reacted negatively, believing women should not participate in politics.

Radical Phase (Phase 2)

• Mass killings to fix overcrowded prisons

• The National Assembly split: Girodins (less radical), and Mountain (most radical) both jacobin

  • Girodins feared the death of king, mountain didn’t

  • The Commune (controls local gov in Paris) pushed the National Convention to more radical positions.

  • Mountain, representing interests of city who were radical and popular, kills Girodins and takes over the National Convention

  • The King was executed: Old regime destroyed

• The Convention didn’t have authority over all of France: (those who opposed would later be killed by Robespierre and the guillotine)

  • Vendée peasants rebel against death of king for the military draft that did not improve their living conditions and preferred the king and power to priests

  • Lyon and Marseille also didnt like. Favored decentralized republic.

• The NC (national convention) gives power to the executive Committee of Public Safety

  • Many countries were against the revolution and the death of king: WAR

  • Levee en Masse raised army of 650k, nation in arms, succeeded in defending. Began total war and Nationalism.

    • Started by Declaration of Pillnitz (1791): retore Louis to power (no head?)

      • War (austria, Russia, Britain, Holland, Spain) call France to revolutionary arms. Pre marxism

  • The Committee institutes “Reign of Terror” to meet domestic crisis. 

  • Robespierre removes right to defend oneself: kills 16k on the Guillotine, 250k total

    • Vendée, Marseille and Lyon, drowning in Loire at Nantes

    • Guillotine symbolized terror and revolution, used for wealthy.

      • Blade of Vengeance: Die for the nation

  • Republic of Virtue: committee tries to control France:

    • Representatives go around France to explain the war and implement law

    • The Law of the General Maximum: price controls on necessities (food, drink, fuel, clothes, etc.)

      • Didn’t work too well because lack of machinery

• NC tries De-christianization:

  • Pillages Churches, Notre Dame becomes Temple of Reason (Cult of Reason)

  • New revolutionary calendar, no sundays, no church holidays. Used metric system (100 seconds, 100 minutes, 10 days/week, 3 weeks/month). Months renamed

  • Robespirre makes Festival of Supreme Being: worship a female of liberty/reason

  • Doesnt work; Opposed by all, Napoleon ends it 1806 for being politically unpopular.

• Radical Revolution ends: Robespierre killed for creating too much terror. Commune leaders were executed too.

• Thermidorian Reaction:

  • Removed jacobin clubs, reopened churches, laissez-faire, new constitution

  • Legislative assembly of two chambers, chosen by electors

Third Phase (Directory) 1795-99

• A 5 member committee that governed France

• Failed because heavy reliance on army

  • Political enemies: Royalists, Jacobins who had hopes of powers restored by bad economy

• Failed to fix the economy of France.

  • Too much war spendings. Collapse in the value of assignats

• Laissez-faire: Corruption.

• White Terror

Edmund Burke:

• Wrote Reflections on the Revolution in France 1790

• Regarded as the Father of Conservatism: conservative commentator

• If no authority: chaos

• If no direction: France controlled by dictator (Napoleon)

• His predictions were correct.

• Burke's critique of the radical shifts brought about by the French Revolution and his advocacy for tradition, gradual reform, and the preservation of established institutions have shaped the foundation of modern conservatism

Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David, a revolutionary, voted to kill king, friend of Robespierre, lived because he was a good painter:

• Marat was a radical revolutionary who was always on the run. Spent lots of time in the sewers and had to take baths.

  • Was stabbed by someone who favored the king, in a bath

• Jacques-Louis wanted to record his death for Propaganda:

  • Wanted to make him a martyr

  • Used Michelangelo’s death of jesus from Pieta on his face.

4th Phase (Age of Napoleon):

• Napoleon:

  • Became first consul after the thermidorian reaction

    • Whiff of Grapeshot: directory gets napoleon to shoot the counter revolutionaries with the cannon, Napoleon shoots them, showing he will do whatever for the state. He saves the directory this way and becomes consul.

  • Controlled the entire executive authority of the government.

  • Became Emperor in 1804

• Concordat 1801

  • Napoleon restored the catholic church with Pope Pius VII in France

  • Created peace with the church again

  • Confiscated church lands were not given back to please the french people

• Code of Napoleon(civil code):

  • Took all the 7 codes of the french revolution and made it into one code. Preserved the revolutionary ideas (equality, property etc.) 

  • Spread to 35 countries

• Role of women: Women got less rights. Made harder to divorce, property is under husband, treated as minors

• Prefects: 

  • Napoleon created intendants for each french province

  • These were called prefects, who were chosen by Napoleon, so they would be loyal to him.

  • Made tax collection super efficient.

    • Balanced budget

• Germaine de Stael: 

  • Female writer

  • Against despotism of Napoleon

  • Gets exiled and books get banned(No more freedom of press)

• Treaty of Tilsit 1807:

  • Napoleon, Austria and prussia signed the treaty to end fighting

  • Made it possible for Napoleon to restock and create a new EU order

• Napoleon’s Grand Empire: 

  • 3 parts: french, dependent states, and allied states

  • Most of Europe under the empire: Spain, Italy, Prussia, Austria, Russia etc. NOT BRITAIN

  • Imposed code of napoleon and constitution on all the states

• Britain:

  • Great britain was impossible to invade because of superior navy

  • Napoleon implemented the Continental system:

    • Prevented EU from trading with Britain

    • Didn’t affect Britain because of international trade

    • Made allied states angry

• Fall of Napoleon

  • Napoleon invaded Russia 1812

  • Failed miserably because RUSSIA BIG, COLD, and they kept running and burning resources.

  • 40k french returned(started with 600k)

  • Other countries, seeing Russia, allied together and defeated Napoleon.

  • Napoleon is exiled to Elba, comes back and gets defeated at waterloo

  • Finally exiled to St. Helena and dies 

• Toussaint L’Ouverture:

  • France was one of the first to outlaw slavery in 1791

  • Slaves in Hispaniolia learned about the french revolution and wanted to do it also

  • Revolt and take over the island

  • 1801 L’Ouverture completely takes over the island

  • 1802 Napoleon puts slavery back in colonies, and captures L’Ouverture

  • Shows the impact of the French revolution.

• Why is the FR so important?:

  • Replaced a society based on rank and wealth with one based on skill and merit

  • Secularization of the church( Church completely out of state)

  • Triumph of the middle class

  • Experiments on all modern governments 

  • Social experiments: police state, early communism , feminism

  • Modern nationalism

  • Code de napoleon spread everywhere