The French Revolution and the Rise of Napoleon
The Ancien Régime
At the beginning of the 18th century, France was the most powerful country in Europe, but its politics and society retained many aspects of feudalism. This system was known as the Ancien Régime.
The king was an absolutist monarch, ruling from the Palace of Versailles. From 1774, Louis XVI, a childish and indecisive ruler, was the king of France.
The French nobility wielded significant power. They could tax local peasants, operate their own courts, and demand unpaid labor for estate upkeep. The nobility comprised only 350,000 people out of a population of 26 million but owned one-quarter of the land.
Almost all senior clergy, army officers, and government ministers were nobles.
The Catholic Church had 100,000 clergymen and owned a tenth of the land. They were exempt from taxes and had considerable influence over culture and education.
The peasantry, about 75% of the population, had the least money but paid the most taxes. Between one-third and one-half of a peasant's income was spent on dues to landlords, tithes to the Church, and taxes to the government. Many lived in poverty.
Financial Crisis
France supported the American Revolution against Britain. This led to an enormous national debt.
Louis XVI tried to reform the taxation system to include the aristocracy, but his finance ministers failed to implement these reforms.
By 1788, France was in crisis due to a cold winter and dry summer, which caused a poor harvest and high bread prices, leading to starvation among peasants.
The bourgeoisie called for radical reforms to government and taxation.
France was on the verge of bankruptcy, unable to pay the interest on its debt.
Revolution
Louis XVI called the Estates-General to approve new taxes. The Estates-General was a meeting of France's three 'estates': the clergy (First Estate), the aristocracy (Second Estate), and the rest of French society (Third Estate), mainly the bourgeoisie.
The Estates-General met on May 5, 1789, at the Palace of Versailles, with 291 nobles, 300 clergy, and 610 members of the Third Estate.
This was the first meeting since 1614, and disagreements arose over the voting power of the Third Estate.
On June 13, the Third Estate broke away and formed the National Assembly.
Rumors spread that Louis XVI planned to shut down the National Assembly using 20,000 soldiers and foreign mercenaries stationed in Paris.
On July 14, a mob of Parisians stormed an army barracks and seized 28,000 muskets.
Soldiers began to desert and join the mob, which then stormed the Bastille, a medieval fortress used to store gunpowder and ammunition. The governor was killed, and his head was placed on a spike.
Louis XVI was advised not to suppress the rebellion with his army, as the troops were unlikely to follow orders. He had lost control of the country.
The French Revolution had begun.
Execution and Terror
Louis XVI showed support for the revolution by wearing a hat with a revolutionary cockade, which had three colors: red and blue (traditional colors of Paris), and white (the color of the French royal family). In 1790, these colors were used as the Tricolour, a new flag for post-revolutionary France.
The National Assembly had authority over France and began writing a new constitution to protect the rights of the people and limit the king's powers. On August 5, feudalism was abolished.
On August 26, the Declaration of the Rights of Man was passed, promising representative government, freedom of speech, and equality before the law. The rallying cry became 'Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!'.
On October 6, Louis and his family were taken from Versailles and imprisoned in Paris.
France became increasingly polarized between those who wanted more radical change and those who thought the revolution had gone too far.
In November 1789, the National Assembly confiscated land belonging to the Catholic Church, leading to anti-Catholic reforms. The Pope condemned the Assembly in March 1791, causing many French Catholics to turn against the Revolution.
In June 1791, Louis XVI and his family attempted to escape but were caught in Varennes and returned to Paris. This 'flight to Varennes' led to revolutionaries losing trust in the king. Distrust heightened when Marie Antoinette's brother, the Austrian Emperor, prepared to invade France and restore Louis XVI's absolutist rule. In June 1792, France declared war on Austria and Prussia.
Parisian revolutionaries from the lower classes were known as sans-culottes, who refused to wear the 'culottes' (silk breeches) of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie. On August 10, 1792, they broke into the royal palace, massacred 600 of the King's Swiss Guard, and placed the royal family under arrest. In September 1792, the monarchy was abolished, and France became a republic. Louis XVI was executed on January 25, 1793, and Marie Antoinette the following year.
Following the execution of Louis XVI, France spiraled into chaos, fighting foreign wars and a civil war against counter-revolutionaries. Anti-Catholic revolutionaries closed churches, forced priests into hiding, and declared a new state religion called the Cult of the Supreme Being. Normal government broke down.
The Jacobins, led by Maximilien Robespierre, took control of France and began a 'reign of terror'. They executed anyone suspected of being a counter-revolutionary using the guillotine.
suspected enemies of the Revolution were sentenced to death, and another unauthorised killings took place.
Opposition to Robespierre grew, and he was arrested and guillotined on July 27, 1794, ending the worst of the revolution.
The Rise of Napoleon
The French Revolutionary Army won significant victories across Europe, led by Napoleon Bonaparte, born in Corsica in 1769.
In 1793, Napoleon captured the port of Toulon and was made a Brigadier General at age 24.
In March 1796, he was placed in command of France's 'Army of Italy', defeated the Austrian army, and turned Austria's Italian possessions into republics.
In 1798, Napoleon launched a campaign to conquer Egypt, aiming to spread French power east.
Since the death of Robespierre, a 'Directorate' with five members had governed France. By August 1799, the Directorate was in crisis. Napoleon staged a coup and was proclaimed First Consul of France in November 1799.
At 30, Napoleon had complete control over French politics. He created the Napoleonic Code, reformed the French education system, rationalized tax collection, and appointed 281 prefects to enforce his laws.
In 1801, he made an agreement with the Pope called the Concordat, which restored Catholicism as France's major religion.
Napoleon introduced heavy censorship and propaganda to promote his rule.
In 1804, Napoleon crowned himself Emperor of the French.
Napoleonic Wars
Britain, Prussia, Austria, Russia, and Sweden united to defeat Napoleon.
In 1805, at the Battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon defeated the combined Austrian and Russian army, suffering only casualties compared to his opponents' .
Napoleon defeated Prussia in 1806 and Russia in 1807.
By 1809, almost all of Europe was part of the French Empire, allied to France, or governed by a 'puppet' ruler controlled from France.
Britain's Response
Initially, many in Britain viewed the French Revolution positively, but as it became more radical, opinion polarized.
Edmund Burke criticized the revolution as too violent and destructive.
Thomas Paine celebrated the revolution and called for radical political reforms in Britain.
Following France's declaration of war on Britain in 1793, British radicals were attacked, and Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger passed laws preventing radical activity.
In 1794, Pitt suspended the Habeas Corpus Act, and in 1795, the Seditions Meetings Act made it illegal to hold a meeting of more than 50 people without a licence.
In 1791, the United Irishmen, inspired by the American and French Revolutions, formed to liberate Ireland from British rule. The British brutally suppressed the United Irishmen uprising.
To gain more control of the country, Parliament passed the Act of Union in 1800. From January 1801, Ireland became part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
In 1803, Napoleon resumed plans to invade Britain. The people of Britain were terrified.
In October 1805, Britain sent Admiral Horatio Nelson to defeat the joint French and Spanish navy off the coast of southern Spain. Nelson won a decisive victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, guaranteeing that Napoleon could no longer launch an invasion of Britain. During the battle, the French and Spanish fleets lost 22 ships, sustaining 5781 casualties. The British lost not ships, only sustaining 1666 casualties. Nelson died during the battle.
The Fall of Napoleon
In 1810, Napoleon was at the height of his power. He married Marie-Louise after divorcing Josephine.
In 1806, Napoleon ordered all European nations to stop trading with the British, called the Continental System. Napoleon sent an army through Spain to occupy the Portuguese capital of Lisbon in 1807, because Portugal refused to follow the Continental System.
In 1808, Napoleon forced the King of Spain to abdicate and replaced him with his brother Joseph Bonaparte. The Spanish people resisted French rule, and applied guerrilla warfare tactics.
In 1809, Britain sent 30,000 troops to Portugal under the command of the Duke of Wellington, who pushed the French out of the Iberian Peninsula.
In 1810, the Russian Tsar Alexander I abandoned the Continental System and resumed trade with Britain. Napoleon ammassed an invasion force of to invade Russia.
The Russian army retreated, and employed a scorched earth strategy, which left the French army with little to eat as they advanced. Napoleon defeated the Russian army in battle and entered Moscow in September 1812, but found it deserted and set on fire. Napoleon and his army were forced to retreat to Western Europe, resulting in horse deaths and only one in four of Napoleon’s invasion force returnning home alive.
In 1814, an allied European army entered Paris and forced Napoleon to abdicate. He was given the island of Elba to govern, but within a year, Napoleon returned to Paris and raised a new army.
The British and Dutch army under the command of the Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo on June 18, 1815, with another 47,000 men dead, dying, or wounded.
Napoleon was imprisoned on the island of St Helena. He died in 1821 at the age of 51.