The French Revolution

Lecture #1

Setting the Stage

I. The Importance of the French Revolution

• Separates Early Modern From Modern • Great Chain is finally smashed…sorta…

– What strand of the chain still exists at this point to be smashed?

• France was the most important country in Europe, (and as a result, the world)– Largest population– Cultural influence– Lingua franca

Schönbrunn Palace

Versailles

II. The Ancien Regime

• Before we jump in to the revolution, we must set the stage a bit– a quick tour of 18th century France

• Historians call the government/social system that existed in France before the French Revolution the ancien regime – traditional/old government

French Absolute French Absolute MonarchyMonarchy

Marie Antoinette & Louis Marie Antoinette & Louis XVIXVI

Marie Marie AntoinettAntoinett

e e and the and the Royal Royal

ChildrenChildren

The Estates System

First EstateSecond EstateThird Estate

Legal Privileges of the 1st Two Estates

• 1st Estate – Clergy• 2nd Estate- Nobility • Don’t pay taxes• Honorific

• For example, the right to best seats at public ceremonies

• Useful • For example, monopoly on bread baking (peasants must pay

their lord to bake bread)

1st Two Estates are Not Homogeneous• wealthy priests high up

in the church (live like nobles)

• poor parish priests (live like peasants)

• wealthy nobles• poorer nobles • Sword versus Robe

Nobles • It is going to be hard to

generalize about any group

The Third Estate

• Is itself broken into three groups– Bourgeois/Middle Class

• The public– Rural Peasants

• The mob– Urban Poor

• The mob

• wealthiest group

• live in towns• lawyers, doctors,

merchants, bankers, etc. (professionals)-

• compete with nobility for status

• Educated

• intellectuals… interested in the Enlightenment

Bourgeoisie / Middle Class

• live in countryside

• farmers

• religious

• not educated

• 80% of France (if they get angry/organized …yikes)

• But hard to organize

Rural peasants

• poorest/ may starve

• not well educated

• high end = skilled workers (blacksmiths, cobblers, etc.)

• low end= unskilled workers (day laborers, servants, etc.)

• a huge number of them in Paris

• unusual amount of political influence considering their small number and poverty … (WHY?)

• Mobs can directly affect government

Urban Workers

Bourgeois v sans culottes

III. Sources of Tension in 18th Century France(Or ‘Why the Revolution Occurred’)

A.• France was an

absolute monarchy … • …but also the home

of… – the Enlightenment

• Bound to Clash

B. The Enlightenment- Liberty and Equality• LIBERTY

– ‘liberate’– Free people from tyranny– Sovereignty to people

• Equality– ‘Equality of Opportunity’ – End legal privileges– Different from ‘Equality of

Condition’• Kings foolishly

welcomed rational thought in science– Improved their power– But ultimately led to the

Enlightenment which undermined them

C. Growing Debt in France• Related to the 2nd Hundred Years’ War Louis

XIV’s attempts to enlarge France through war • Massive government borrowing

– By the start of the French Revolution, the government is paying 50% of its total revenue just to pay interest on its debts

– NOT GOOD! • Richest part of the population is tax exempt• Short term cash infusion from Nobles of the Robe

destroys long term income • Poor harvests in the twenty years before the

French Revolution– Remember that the Agricultural Revolution didn’t

improve standard of living• Why?

The French Urban The French Urban PoorPoor

01020304050607080

% of Income Spent on Bread

17871788

a Urban Urban Commoner’sCommoner’sBudget:Budget:

– Food 80%Food 80%– Rent 25%Rent 25%– Tithe 10%Tithe 10%– Taxes 35%Taxes 35%– Clothing 20%Clothing 20%– TOTAL 170%TOTAL 170%

a King’s Budget:King’s Budget:– Interest 50%Interest 50%– Army 25%Army 25%– Versailles 25%Versailles 25%– Coronation 10%Coronation 10%– Loans 25%Loans 25%– Admin. 25%Admin. 25%– TOTAL 160%TOTAL 160%

Financial ProblemsFinancial Problemsin France, 1789in France, 1789

D. Real/Perceived Royal Extravagance

• Royalty in France had traditionally been admired for their lavish lives – Their great spending honored France

• However, with a crumbling economy and Enlightenment rationality, the public attitude was changing– Royalty had an inability to understand the

plight of the common people

Marie Antoinette’sMarie Antoinette’s“Peasant Cottage”“Peasant Cottage”

Marie Antoinette’sMarie Antoinette’s“Peasant Cottage”“Peasant Cottage”

The Necklace The Necklace ScandalScandal

1,600,000 1,600,000 livreslivres

[$100 million today][$100 million today]

Let Them Eat Cake! Let Them Eat Cake!

Y Marie Antoinette NEVER said that!Marie Antoinette NEVER said that!Y ““Madame Deficit”Madame Deficit”Y ““The Austrian Whore”The Austrian Whore”

E. Unfair Land E. Unfair Land DistributionDistribution

F. The Influence of the American Revolution

• If they can live as an Enlightened republic, complete with Enlightenment liberty and equality, why can’t we?

• France had intimate knowledge of the American Revolution– Why? – Marquis de Lafayette

• More on this later…

G. Loss of Royal Prestige

• “Letters of cachet”– Conflicts with the Enlightenment

• Louis XVI is weak and indecisive– Parlements and Remonstration– Louis XV had blasted apart the Parlements… Louis XVI

restores them– Wants to be loved… Machiavelli would NOT have approved

• Increasing Numbers of Under the Cloak Books– Many were pornographic treatments of the Royal family

• Scanned images???

IV. Conflicting Desires for Change • Royals

– We don’t want change, but we do have money problems… • Nobles

– The royals don’t know how to run things… give us more power• Echo of Montesquieu

– However, cut off nobility from those damned upstart Bourgeois • Bourgeois

– want the glass ceiling removed– We have got money! More at times than nobles.– But watch out for the mob… they are dangerous. They are a useful tool to scare

the nobles IF used correctly. • Rural Peasants

– land and food, but not much other change (not philosophers)– Religious/traditional

• Urban Workers– Extremists/Revolution!!! – Why so extreme?

• Poorest• Live right next to richest

The Political The Political SpectrumSpectrum

JacobinJacobinss

MontagnarMontagnardsds

(“The (“The Mountain”)Mountain”)

GirondistsGirondistsMonarchíeMonarchíe

nn(Royalists)(Royalists)

1790s:1790s:The PlainThe Plain

(swing (swing votes)votes)

TODAY:TODAY:

Want change Don’t want change

/Reactionary

/ Radicals

Moderate ExtremeExtreme

Basic Ideologies • Reactionaries/Conservatives

– things should stay the way they are under the king class – distinctions are necessary and good

• Moderate conservatives and moderate liberals– Constitutional monarchy – A move towards individual freedoms and away from tyranny without

‘overturning the apple cart’ • Liberals/Radicals

– republic (democracy/ popular sovereignty) – Full freedom and equality – equality of opportunity

• Socialists- (this term was developed after the Revolution)– extreme change– equality of condition

The Political The Political SpectrumSpectrum

JacobinJacobinss

MontagnarMontagnardsds

(“The (“The Mountain”)Mountain”)

GirondistsGirondistsMonarchíeMonarchíe

nn(Royalists)(Royalists)

1790s:1790s:The PlainThe Plain

(swing (swing votes)votes)

TODAY:TODAY:

Want change Don’t want change

/Reactionary

/ Radicals

Moderate ExtremeExtreme

Urban Workers Bourgeois Nobles Kings/Clergy

Rural Peasants???

The political terms ‘right’ and ‘left’ even come from the way the representatives sat in the Legislative Assembly

Radicals- Want Change!!!

Conservatives-Want to Stay the Same!!!

V. The Catholic Church in France

•Church has a lot of land in France

•This land is not taxed by the crown… large loss of income

•Church and Enlightenment clash

•Many nobles and bourgeois are anti-church

•Rural peasants and royal family are pro church

•Huguenot versus Catholic

•Many Huguenot fled as a result of Louis XIV’s intolerance (revocation of the Edict of ______)

•Nantes

VI. Revolutionary Themes

• The Cascade Effect

– And

• the Strong Man Effect

Historians Have noticed that there are patterns to Political Revolutions

• The ‘Cascade Effect’ – Often the first revolutionary change of government is

followed by a series (or cascade) of other revolutions– Why?

• It is easier to agree on what you ___________ than what you _________

• Groups that joined to kick the gov out start to __________

• Often (not always!) a Strong Man (Dictator/ Tyrant) arises. Why? – people become so sick of the cascading revolutions that

they would prefer anything to chaos – I bet you know the name of the French ‘strong man’

Governments• Louis XVI

– Assembly of Notables • Assemblies

– Estates General – National Assembly (group that marched out of Estates General to

Tennis Court)– Legislative Assembly (National dissolved itself and held new

elections to gain legitimacy- largely Jacobins chosen) – National Convention (new elections to form a Republic were

declared when the king was put on trial)• Directory• Napoleonic Empire • Louis XVIII

• 1763 The Seven Years’ War …British take over French lands in the New World and French debt grows from the cost of the war…• the American Revolution … Frenchmen like the Marquis de Lafayette join the fight and France goes deeper into debt paying for the war • 1787 America, victorious in the American Revolution, writes a Republican Constitution • 1780- 1790 French king pays 50% of royal tax income to cover royal debts • 1785-1790s Poor harvests and inflation harm poor peasants… bread prices skyrocket• 1787 Louis XIV calls an ‘assembly of notables’ and requests an increase in royal taxes; they recommend that if higher taxes are paid then the nobles

should have full say over how the money is spent… Louis refuses and the notables demand the Estates General • 1787 Louis dissolved the ‘assembly of notables’ and passed taxes by ‘decree’; Parlament of Paris resists, and a mass of protests against the king

broke out across France • May 5, 1789- Louis XVI holds first meeting of the Estates-General in over 150 years • June– Deadlock in the Estates General over Voting System • June 17, 1789 –Third Estate declares itself the National Assembly• June 20, 1789 - Oath of the Tennis Court• June 20th to July 14th- Louis XIV brings royal troops into Paris • July 14, 1789 - Storming of the Bastille• August 4th 1789- Many noble members of the National Assembly give up their estate privilege • August 26, 1789 - Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen issued• October 5, 1789 - Parisian women march to Versailles and force Louis XVI to return to Paris• July 1790 Louis XVI agrees to accept France as a Constitutional monarchy under a Constitution to be hammered out by the National Assembly

(which they finally did by September 1791) • June 1791 - Louis XVI and family attempt to flee France to Austria, but are captured and returned• April 1792 - France declares war on Austria• August 10, 1792 - Storming of the Tuileries• January 1793 - Louis XVI executed• July 1793 - Maximilien Robespierre assumes leadership of the Committee of Public Safety• 1793-1794 - Reign of Terror• 1794 - Robespierre is guillotined• 1794-Thermidorian Reaction• 1795- Economic controls are abolished, and suppression of the sans-culottes begins. • 1799 - Napoleon Bonaparte overthrows the Directory and seizes power• 1801 Napoleon signs a peace-making Concordat with the Catholic Church • 1804 Napoleon’s Civil Code • 21 October 1805 Battle of Trafalgar • 1810 Napoleonic Empire reaches its height • 1812 Napoleon’s invasion of Russia • 1814 Waterloo

Phases

• 1763 The Seven Years’ War …British take over French lands in the New World and French debt grows from the cost of the war…• the American Revolution … Frenchmen like the Marquis de Lafayette join the fight and France goes deeper into debt paying for the war • 1787 America, victorious in the American Revolution, writes a Republican Constitution • 1780- 1790 French king pays 50% of royal tax income to cover royal debts • 1785-1790s Poor harvests and inflation harm poor peasants… bread prices skyrocket• 1787 Louis XIV calls an ‘assembly of notables’ and requests an increase in royal taxes; they recommend that if higher taxes are paid then the nobles

should have full say over how the money is spent… Louis refuses and the notables demand the Estates General • 1787 Louis dissolved the ‘assembly of notables’ and passed taxes by ‘decree’; Parlament of Paris resists, and a mass of protests against the king

broke out across France • May 5, 1789- Louis XVI holds first meeting of the Estates-General in over 150 years • June– Deadlock in the Estates General over Voting System • June 17, 1789 –Third Estate declares itself the National Assembly• June 20, 1789 - Oath of the Tennis Court• June 20th to July 14th- Louis XIV brings royal troops into Paris • July 14, 1789 - Storming of the Bastille• August 4th 1789- Many noble members of the National Assembly give up their estate privilege • August 26, 1789 - Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen issued• October 5, 1789 - Parisian women march to Versailles and force Louis XVI to return to Paris• July 1790 Louis XVI agrees to accept France as a Constitutional monarchy under a Constitution to be hammered out by the National Assembly

(which they finally did by September 1791) • June 1791 - Louis XVI and family attempt to flee France to Austria, but are captured and returned• April 1792 - France declares war on Austria• August 10, 1792 - Storming of the Tuileries• January 1793 - Louis XVI executed• July 1793 - Maximilien Robespierre assumes leadership of the Committee of Public Safety• 1793-1794 - Reign of Terror• 1794 - Robespierre is guillotined• 1794-Thermidorian Reaction• 1795- Economic controls are abolished, and suppression of the sans-culottes begins. • 1799 - Napoleon Bonaparte overthrows the Directory and seizes power• 1801 Napoleon signs a peace-making Concordat with the Catholic Church • 1804 Napoleon’s Civil Code • 21 October 1805 Battle of Trafalgar • 1810 Napoleonic Empire reaches its height • 1812 Napoleon’s invasion of Russia • 1814 Waterloo

Phases

A. Growing Tension

1. Moderate (aka liberal or bourgeois) Stage (What makes it moderate?

2. Radical Stage (What makes it radical?)

3. Moderately Reactionary Stage (Huh?)4.Napoleonic

Empire(What is it?)

B. Extremely Reactionary Stage (Huh?)