Transcript The French Revolution - Hackettstown School District

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
1789-1792
GLOBAL CONTEXT
• Enlightenment ideals of the 18th century inspired reform & revolution
• American Revolution occurred in the late 1770s to early 1780s
• French involved in supporting the American Revolutionaries
• Revolts also occurred in the Dutch Republic, Austrian Netherlands
(Belgium & Luxembourg), and Poland
• France was richest, most powerful, and most populous state in Western Europe in the
1780s
• Revolution lasted longer, brought about more changes, and caused more violence than
others
• Shaped European politics for generations afterward
ORIGINS OF FRENCH REVOLUTION
• Monarchy seemed strong in late 1780s
• Lost to British in Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), but
regained international prestige
• Supported Americans in the Revolutionary War
• But, high price = about half the national budget went
to paying interest on war debt
• Lived off relatively short-term, high interest loans
from private sources (incl. Swiss banks & tax
collectors)
ORIGINS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION:
SOCIAL CONDITIONS
• Estates System
• First Estate: clergy of Catholic Church (100,000 people)
• Owned ~10% of land
• Taxed peasants
• Exempt to paying taxes
• Second Estate – nobility (400,000 people)
• Owned ~25% of land
• Collected duties & rents from peasants living on land
• Third Estate – everyone else (95% of nation)
• Bourgeoisie
• City Workers
• Peasants
• Resented paying taxes to Church & the monarchy
Pause!
• How do you think this social
structure will cause the French
Revolution?
• What other factors contributed?
AT THE SAME TIME – FOOD SHORTAGE
• Weather damaged
harvest of 1788
• Bread prices soared
• Poor people threatened
by starvation in summer
1789
• Coupled with
unemployment (slump
in textile production)
since 1786
The March on Versailles, was one of the earliest and most significant events of the French Revolution. The march began among
women in the marketplaces of Paris who, on the morning of 5 October 1789, were near rioting over the high price and scarcity of bread.
Their demonstrations quickly became intertwined with the activities of revolutionaries who were seeking liberal political reforms and
a constitutional monarchy for France. The market women and their allies grew into a mob of thousands and ransacked the city armory
for weapons and marched to the Palace of Versailles. The crowd besieged the palace and in a dramatic and violent confrontation they
successfully pressed their demands upon King Louis XVI. The next day, the crowd compelled the king, his family, and most of the
French Assembly to return with them to Paris.
These events effectively ended the independent authority of the king. The march symbolized a new balance of power that displaced the
ancient privileged orders of the French nobility and favored the nation's common people, collectively termed the Third Estate. Bringing
together people representing disparate sources of the Revolution in their largest numbers yet, the march on Versailles proved to be a
defining moment of that Revolution.
ORIGINS OF FRENCH REVOLUTION:
ECONOMY
• Peasants bore greatest burden of taxation
• Resented exceptions granted to nobles & clergy
• Private contractors profited from tax collection
• People began demanding clearer system of fiscal
accountability from upper classes
• Marie Antoinette spent much money
• Louis XVI (r.1774-1792) tried to raise funds
• Tried to reform Assembly of Notables, but they wouldn’t cooperate
• Parlement of Paris also refused proposals for more uniform land tax
• So, he ordered judges into exile in the provinces!
• Judges became heroes for resisting ‘tyranny’ but really only wanted reform
on their own terms
• Finally, Louis called a meeting of the Estates General, which had
previously met 175 years before
ROAD TO THE MEETING OF THE ESTATES GENERAL
• 3 estates had not met for 175 years
• Each order voted separately in the 1614 meeting
• Clergy & nobles could veto the decision of the Third Estate
• Before the election of the deputies in 1789, the king
agreed to double the # of deputies to the Third Estate,
making them equal to the other 2 combined
• Still up to the Estates whether to vote by order or by individual
head (which would give the Third Estate an advantage)
• VERY Exciting
• Censorship broke down – pamphlets denounced privileges of nobility & clergy
• Men & some women held meetings to elect deputies & write down grievances
• Meetings raised expectations that the Estates General would help king resolve the nation’s ills
THE ESTATES GENERAL MEETING
• 1200 deputies went to Palace of Versailles in May
1789
• Third Estate refused to proceed on voting by order
• 6 week stalemate  Third Estate declared
themselves and whoever would join them the
National Assembly [June 17, 1789], where each
deputy would vote as an individual
• Clergy voted to join them, by a narrow margin
• Met on a nearby tennis court on June 20, 1789 & swore an
oath not to disband until they had a new constitution
[Tennis Court Oath]
LOUIS XVI’S REACTION
• At first, appeared to agree with new assembly
• Also ordered thousands of soldiers to march on Paris
• National Assembly feared a plot by the king to arrest them &
disperse the assembly
• Fears confirmed on July 11 - king fired his finance minister,
who was sympathetic to the deputies’ cause
• Parisians were FURIOUS by this & the threat of military
action, changing the course of the French Revolution
PEOPLE’S INVOLVEMENT IN THE REVOLUTION
• Began arming themselves
• Attacked places holding arms or grain
• Stormed the Bastille, a prison symbolizing royal authority, on July 14, 1789
• 100 citizens died
• Prison officials did surrender
• Crowd shot & stabbed the governor of the prison
• Displayed his head on a pike
• Set an important precedent – common people willing to intervene with violence
• Fall of Bastille triggered food riots to turn into local revolts elsewhere in France
• Local governments forced from power, replaced by local committees of ‘patriots’
• Supported by National Guard units
• Will be headed by the Marquis de Lafayette
• Needed to calm peasants in countryside
• Great Fear – rural panic / paranoia of peasants against aristocrats  resulted in attacks on aristocrats and lords’
chateaus
• King’s government began to crumble
Pause!
Who were the Revolution’s first
heroes, victims, and enemies?
CHALLENGES FOR THE ASSEMBLY
• National Assembly had to confront growing violence in the
countryside (Great Fear)
• Nobles announced willingness to give up tax exemptions & seigniorial
dues on Aug. 4, 1789
• Inspired deputies to relinquish tax exemptions of their own groups,
towns, or provinces
• Decreed abolition of the feudal regime – freed the serfs & eliminated
special privileges for nobles
• Peasants had achieved their goals!
• Assembly also mandated equality of opportunity in access to
official posts
• 3 weeks later, wrote the Declaration of the Rights of
Man and of the Citizen
• Preamble to their constitution
• Pronounced ‘men’ as free and equal
• What about women?
• What about free blacks in the colonies?
• How could slavery be justified?
WOMEN IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
• Some did not accept exclusion in the Declaration of Rights of Man
• Joined demonstrations
•
•
•
•
March to Versailles (Oct. 1789)
Wrote petitions
Published tracts
Organized political clubs
• Olympe de Gouges – Declaration of the Rights of Women, 1791
• National Assembly unresponsive
• Voting rights only to white men who paid minimum level of taxes
• Defined as passive citizens
FROM ABSOLUTISM TO CONSTITUTIONAL
MONARCHY
• Until July 1789, the French Rev. was very similar
to protest movements in the Low Countries
• Unlike the Dutch & Belgian uprisings, the
French Rev. did not come to a quick end
• First tried to establish a constitutional
monarchy based on Enlightenment principles
of human rights & rational government
CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY
• Constitution completed in 1791
• King served as leading state functionary / figurehead (still Louis XVI + Marie Antoinette)
• Unicameral legislature responsible for making laws, called the National Convention (est.
1792)
• King could hold up enactment of laws, but not veto them
• Nobles lost tax exemptions, and in 1790, lost titles of nobility
• Old provinces replaced with national system of 83 regional
departments with same legal & administrative structure
• Remain the basic units of the French state today
• All officials elected
• New taxes, supposedly uniformly levied
• Difficulty in collecting taxes though
REFORMING THE CHURCH
• Created enduring conflicts
• Confiscated the church’s property & promised to pay clerical salaries in return
• Civil Constitution of the Clergy – 1790 – set pay scales & provided voting for parish priests &
bishops
• State began auctioning off church lands
• Outlawed any future monastic vows
• Encouraged monks & nuns to return to private life on state pensions
• Church resisted changes  National Assembly required clergy to swear oath of loyalty to
Civil Constitution of the Clergy
• Pope Pius VI (Rome) condemned the constitution
• Half of French clergy refused oath
• Permanently divided Catholic population - choose between old church or commitment to the
revolution & ‘constitutional’ church
Pause!
How did the Church change in the
French Revolution?
LOUIS XVI
• Figurehead of France
• Resented limits on his powers & changes imposed on the
Catholic Church
• June 20, 1791 – he & royal family escaped, disguised, to the
eastern border
• Hoped to gain support from Austrian emperor Leopold II, brother
of Marie Antoinette
• Recognized & arrested
• Sparked demonstrations in Paris against the royal family
• By early 1792, intent on war with Austria
• Royals hoped the war would defeat the Revolution
• Deputies of the Assembly wanted a republic thought war would
reveal king’s treachery & lead to his downfall
Marie Antoinette was married to Louis when
she was 14 and he was 15, without ever having
met. Marriage was about political connections,
and her parents were Maria Theresa and
Francis I of the Holy Roman Empire.
WAR WITH AUSTRIA…
• Louis declared war on April 20, 1792
• Prussia entered on Austrian side
• Thousands of French aristocrats & 2/3 of the army officers had emigrated
to Austria & wanted to join the counterrevolutionary army (Austria’s side)
• Expected a brief, contained war  but it continued for 23 years!
• Immediate effect on French politics
• Armies unprepared  authority of the Assembly came under attack
• People stormed the Assembly & threatened the royal family
• Prussians said Paris would be destroyed if the royal family suffered violence
• Ordinary people formed political clubs – most notably, Jacobin Club
• Discussed opinions of news
• Attacked the Tuileries palace, where king lived, & sparked insurrection in August 1792
• Assembly ordered new elections, with universal male suffrage
SEPTEMBER MASSACRES
• Prussians approached Paris in Sept. 1792
• Mobs stormed prisons to look for traitors
who would help enemy
• 1,100 inmates killed
• Princess of Lamballe decapitated
EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI
• First Republic founded Sept. 22, 1792 : National Convention abolished the
monarchy
• Needed to write a new constitution while fighting a war with external enemies &
forces at home
• Symbolic actions very important (few people literate, monarchy was all they’d
known..)
• Pulled down statues of kings
• Burned reminders of monarchy
• Jacobins divided into 2 factions
• Girondins resented power of Parisian militants & appealed to powers outside Paris
• Montagnards closely allied with militants
• Battled in the trial of the king in Dec. 1792
• Girondins favored exile
• Deputies voted by a narrow margin to execute the king
• Louis XVI died by guillotine on January 21, 1793
• Horrified European elites
• British government suppressed reformers
• Spain suppressed all news from France
• Girondins didn’t last much longer
• 29 arrested in June
• Dissent could prove fatal…
THE REIGN OF TERROR
A Republic of Virtue
1793-1794
PROBLEMS FOR THE REPUBLIC
• Continuing war with Austria
• Required men & money
• Resistance to national draft
• Armies also fought in the Caribbean (slave revolt..
Haitian Revolution.. We come back to this)
• National Convention established highly centralized government
• Provide food
• Direct war effort
• Punish counterrevolutionaries
• The Reign of Terror
• Symbolized by the guillotine
• Aimed to create a Republic of Virtue – political reeducation  citizens become virtuous republicans
• Policies only increased divisions in society
• Ultimately led to dismantling of Robespierre’s government by terror
LEADING THE TERROR
• Setting course for government & war fell to Committee of
Public Safety
• Set up by the National Convention on April 6, 1793; restructured
in July
• Did everything possible to ensure control
• Sent deputies to purge unreliable officials
• First universal draft in history – all unmarried men & childless
widowers 18-25 eligible for conscription
• Revolutionary tribunals tried political suspects
• Convicted Marie Antoinette of treason in Oct. 1793
• Girondin leaders guillotines
• Also Olympe de Gouges
• Headed by Maximilien Robespierre
• A Montagnard & lawyer from northern France
• Became chief spokesman for the Revolution
• Originally opposed the death penalty & slavery, but quickly took
lead in implementing emergency measures
• Death for Girondins
• Clamped down on popular demonstrations
ROBESPIERRE’S IDEOLOGY
• Read classics of republicanism
• Romans – Tacitus & Plutarch
• Enlightenment – Montesquieu & Rousseau
• Took republican thought a step further
• Spoke of theory of revolutionary government as the war of
liberty against its enemies
• Defended democratic government, but really supported
measures restricting liberties
• Favored free-market economy personally, but enacted
price controls & requisitioning
• Defended government by terror:
• “The first maxim of your policies must be to lead the
people by reason and the people’s enemies by terror …
without virtue, terror is deadly; without terror, virtue is
impotent.”
• Terror = suppression of all dissent to assure democracy
• April 1793: several opponents, all fearful of the impact of
revolutionary ideas on their populations
• Austria
• Prussia
• Great Britain
• Spain
• Sardinia
• Dutch Republic
• Republic tapped into new power- nationalist pride – to mobilize the
young & old
• Produced thousands of guns & citizens helped the war effort
• Powers against France squandered best chance for victory in 1793
• French army on verge of chaos (officers had left, needed to bring in
draftees = turbulence, disorganization)
• Prussia, Russia, & Austria all preoccupied with Poland  eliminated
Poland from the map in 1795
• Gave France time to regroup & amassed 700,000 man force by end of
1793
•
Stopped allied advance
•
Moved into territories of their enemies
•
Spread republican ideas throughout Europe
MILITARY SUCCESS
MILITARY FAILURE
• Less successful in combating slave uprising in Saint-Domingue (Haiti)
• Large-scale revolt organized August 1791
• Slave population had doubled in 20 years before 1789 in Haiti
• 465,000 Slaves
• 30,000 Whites
• 28,000 Free Blacks
• Most important French colony
• French revolutionaries didn’t consider slavery a pressing problem
• Paris’s Friends of Blacks club was an exception
• National Convention formally abolished slavery in February 1794, granting full rights to all black
men in France’s colonies
• Problem – very expensive, action not effective to maintain Haiti as a colony, shortly will lose Haiti
THE REPUBLIC OF VIRTUE
• Committee of Public Safety tried to win hearts & minds in France
•
•
•
•
National anthem
Propaganda: Placards, posters, pamphlets, books
Arts: sculpture, paintings, chamber pots, playing cards
Tricolor – red, white, and blue – devised in July 1789 became flag & everyone had to wear the colors by 1793
• Sponsored competitions for artists to “awaken public spirit & make clear how atrocious and ridiculous were the
enemies of liberty & the Republic”
• Bastille Day emerged in 1790 + other festivals
• Some hoped the festival system would replace the Catholic Church altogether & initiated de-Christianization
• Halted by the Committee in fear it would turn rural, devout populations against the Republic
• Changes to traditional life
• New calendar replaced Christian one – Year 1 began in 1792
• New metric system – same one adopted in Europe today
• Family life
• Birth, death, and marriage registration at city hall (not church)
• New divorce law (revoked in 1816)
• Equal inheritance among children, including girls
• Most effective – education of the young
• Free compulsory primary education for boys and girls
• Took control of education away from Catholic Church
• A nice idea, but ultimately unsuccessful
• Lacked trained teachers
• Opportunities for literacy may have diminished, not increased
• 1799 – only 1/5 the number of boys enrolled in secondary schools as had studied in church schools 10 years earlier
RESISTING THE REVOLUTION
• Government intruded into religion, culture, & daily life,
igniting resistance
• Methods of protest
• Uprooting liberty trees
• Carrying statues of Virgin Mary in procession
• Hiding priests
• Singing a royalist song
• Women
• Spontaneous riots over high prices of bread or food
shortages
• Assassination of deputies
• Organized resistance broke out in many parts of France
• Arrest of Girondin deputies sparked dept. insurrections
that could have threatened central government
• Turned to full-scale civil war in Vendee region
• Both sides committed atrocities
• Estimates of rebel deaths alone range 20,000-250,000
FALL OF ROBESPIERRE
• Robespierre tried to exert Convention’s control over political activity & weed out opposition among
deputies
• First, suppressed women’s political clubs
• Then, moved against critics in Paris – execution
• Laws passed in 1794 denying the accused the right of legal counsel, reduced # jurors necessary for conviction, &
limited the outcome: acquittal or death
• Rate of executions rose from 5 a day in the spring of 1794 to 26 a day in the summer
• Political situation darkened (although military position improved, defeating Austrian Army & advancing to Antwerp
in Austrian Netherlands)
• Prophecies of doom were becoming real
• Terror hardly touched many parts of France, but still traumatic
• 40,000 deaths
• 300,000 imprisoned between March 1793 – August 1794, esp. aristocrats & clergy
• 30-40,000 clergy refused oath & emigrated
• 2,000 clergy, incl. nuns, executed
• Final crisis: July 1794
• Conflicts within the Committee & National Convention left Robespierre isolated
• Appeared with another list of deputies to be arrested to the national Convention on July 27
• Many feared they would be on the list, so they ordered Robespierre to be arrested along with followers
• Tried to kill himself with a pistol, but broke his jaw
• Next day, he and others went to guillotine
END OF THE TERROR
• Men who attacked Robespierre did not intend to reverse all his
policies, but that happened anyway
• Thermidorian Reaction – attacked Robespierre & his cohorts
• Government released hundreds of suspects & arranged
temporary truce in Vendee
• Purged Jacobins from local bodies & replaced them with their
opponents
• Abolished Revolutionary Tribunal & closed the Jacobin Club in
Paris
• Southeastern France: ‘White Terror’ replaced the Jacobins’ ‘Red
Terror’
• Former officials were harassed, beaten, and sometimes murdered
• National Convention prepared another constitution in 1795
• Two-house legislature
• Executive body – the Directory – headed by 5 directors
• Maintained itself by alternately purging royalists and Jacobins
• Relatively weak at home, but were successful in war campaigns
abroad, annexing the Austrian Netherlands in 1794 & creating the
Batavian Republic in 1795
What modern-day countries were
controlled by France?
What impact would this have for the
image of the French in Europe?