The
French Revolution (1789–1799) was a period of political and social upheaval and radical change in the
history of FranceThe history of France has been divided into a series of historical articles navigable through the list to the right. The chronological and governmental regimes in France. The history of other cultural topics such as French art and literature can be found on their own pages. For information on the...
, during which the French governmental structure, previously an
absolute monarchyAbsolute monarchy is a monarchical form of government where the king or queen has absolute power over all aspects of his/her subjects' lives. Although some religious authorities may be able to discourage the monarch from some acts and the sovereign is expected to act according to custom, in an...
with
feudal privilegesFeudalism is a decentralized sociopolitical structure in which a weak monarchy attempts to control the lands of the realm through reciprocal agreements with regional leaders...
for the
aristocracyAristocracy is a form of government, in which a few of the most prominent citizens rule. This may be a hereditary elite, or it may be by a system of cooption where a council of prominent citizens add leading soldiers, merchants, land owners, priests, and lawyers to their number...
and
CatholicThe Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church. With more than a billion members, over half of all Christians and more than one-sixth of the world's population, the Catholic Church is a communion of the Western, or Latin Rite Church, and...
clergyClergy is the generic term used to describe the formal religious leadership within a given religion. The term ultimately comes from the Greek κλῆρος - klēros, "a lot", "that which is assigned by lot" or metaphorically, "inheritence"....
, underwent radical change to forms based on
EnlightenmentThe Age of Enlightenment, or simply The Enlightenment, is a term used to describe a time in Western philosophy and cultural life, centered upon the eighteenth century, in which reason was advocated as the primary source and legitimacy for authority....
principles of
citizenshipCitizenship is the state of being a citizen of a particular social, political, or national community.Citizenship status, under social contract theory, carries with it both rights and responsibilities...
and inalienable rights.
These changes were accompanied by violent turmoil which included the trial and execution of the king, vast bloodshed and repression during the
Reign of TerrorThe Reign of Terror , also known as the The Terror was a period of violence that occurred four years and two months after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of the...
, and
warfare involving every other major European powerThe French Revolutionary Wars were a series of major conflicts, from 1792 until 1802, fought between the French Revolutionary government and several European states...
. Subsequent events that can be traced to the Revolution include the
Napoleonic WarsThe Napoleonic Wars were a series of conflicts declared against Napoleon's French Empire and changing sets of European allies by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionized European armies and played...
, two separate
restorations of the monarchyThe Bourbon Restoration is the name given to the restored Bourbon Kingdom of France which existed from 1814 until the July Revolution of 1830, with the interval of the "Hundred Days" from Napoleon Bonaparte's return from Elba to the Battle of Waterloo in 1814–15. The regime was a constitutional...
, and two additional revolutions as modern France took shape.
In the following century, France would be governed at one point or another as a
republicA republic is a form of government in which the head of state is not a monarch and the people have an impact on its government. The word 'republic' is derived from the Latin phrase res publica which can be translated as "a public affair".Both modern and ancient republics vary widely in their...
,
constitutional monarchyA constitutional monarchy is a form of government in which a monarch acts as head of state within the parameters of a written , unwritten or blended constitution...
, and two different
empireThe term French Empire can refer to:* Two Empires of the French founded by members of the House of Bonaparte,** The First French Empire of Napoleon I and II ** The Second French Empire of Napoleon III...
s.
Causes
Adherents of most historical models identify many of the same features of the
Ancien RégimeAncien Régime refers primarily to the aristocratic, social, and political system established in France under the Valois and Bourbon dynasties...
as being among the causes of the Revolution. Economic factors included widespread
famineA famine is a widespread scarcity of food that may apply to any faunal species, which phenomenon is usually accompanied by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality...
and
malnutritionMalnutrition is the insufficient, excessive or imbalanced consumption of nutrients.A number of different nutrition disorders may arise, depending on which nutrients are under or overabundant in the diet....
, which increased the likelihood of
diseaseA disease or medical condition isan abnormal condition of an organism that impairs bodily functions, associated with specific symptoms and signs...
and death, and intentional
starvationStarvation is a severe reduction in vitamin, nutrient, and energy intake. It is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation can cause permanent organ damage, and eventually death...
in the most destitute segments of the population in the months immediately before the Revolution. The famine extended even to other parts of
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
, and was not helped by a poor transportation infrastructure for bulk foods. (Recent research has also attributed the widespread famine to an El Niño effect following the 1783 Laki eruption on
IcelandThe Republic of Iceland is a European island country located in the North Atlantic Ocean. It has a population of about 320,000 and a total area of 103,000 km². Its capital and largest city is Reykjavík, whose surrounding area is home to approximately two thirds of the national population...
, or colder climate of the
Little Ice AgeThe Little Ice Age was a period of cooling that occurred after a warmer era known as the Medieval Warm Period. While not a true ice age, the term was introduced into scientific literature by François E. Matthes in 1939...
combined with France's failure to adopt the
potatoThe potato is a starchy, tuberous crop from the perennial Solanum tuberosum of the Solanaceae family . The word potato may refer to the plant itself as well. In the region of the Andes, there are some other closely related cultivated potato species. Potatoes are the world's fourth largest food...
as a staple crop.)
Another cause was the fact that Louis XV fought many wars, bringing France to the verge of bankruptcy, and Louis XVI supported the colonists during the
American RevolutionThe American Revolution is the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen of Britain's colonies in North America at first rejected the governance of the Parliament of Great Britain, and later the British monarchy itself, to become the sovereign United States of...
, exacerbating the precarious financial condition of the government. The national debt amounted to almost two billion
livresThe livre tournois was:#one of numerous currencies used in France in the Middle Ages; and#a unit of account used in France in the Middle Ages and the early modern period.- Circulating currency :...
. The social burdens caused by war included the huge war debt, made worse by the monarchy's military failures and ineptitude, and the lack of social services for war veterans. The inefficient and antiquated financial system was unable to manage the
national debtGovernment debt is money owed by any level of government; either central government, federal government, municipal government or local government...
, something which was both caused and exacerbated by the burden of a grossly inequitable system of taxation. Another cause was the continued
conspicuous consumptionConspicuous consumption is a term used to describe the lavish spending on goods and services acquired mainly for the purpose of displaying income or wealth. In the mind of a conspicuous consumer, such display serves as a means of attaining or maintaining social status...
of the noble class, especially the court of
Louis XVILouis XVI of France ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1774 until 1791, and then as King of the French from 1791 to 1792. Suspended and arrested during the Insurrection of 10 August 1792, he was tried by the National Convention, found guilty of treason, and executed by guillotine on 21...
and Marie-Antoinette at
VersaillesVersailles , a city renowned for its château, the Palace of Versailles, was the de facto capital of the kingdom of France for over a century, from 1682 to 1789. It is now a wealthy suburb of Paris and remains an important administrative and judicial center...
, despite the financial burden on the populace. High
unemploymentUnemployment occurs when a person is available to work and seeking work but currently without work. The prevalence of unemployment is usually measured using the unemployment rate, which is defined as the percentage of those in the labor force who are unemployed...
and high bread prices caused more money to be spent on food and less in other areas of the economy. The
Roman Catholic ChurchThe Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church. With more than a billion members, over half of all Christians and more than one-sixth of the world's population, the Catholic Church is a communion of the Western, or Latin Rite Church, and...
, the largest landowner in the country, levied a tax on crops known as the
dime or
titheA tithe is a one-tenth part of something, paid as a voluntary contribution or as a tax or levy, usually to support a religious organization. Today, tithes are normally voluntary and paid in cash, cheques, or stocks, whereas historically tithes could be paid in kind, such as agricultural products...
. While the
dîme lessened the severity of the monarchy's tax increases, it worsened the plight of the poorest who faced a daily struggle with malnutrition. There was too little internal trade and too many customs barriers.
There were also social and political factors, many of which involved resentments and aspirations given focus by the rise of
EnlightenmentThe Age of Enlightenment, or simply The Enlightenment, is a term used to describe a time in Western philosophy and cultural life, centered upon the eighteenth century, in which reason was advocated as the primary source and legitimacy for authority....
ideals. These included resentment of royal absolutism; resentment by the ambitious professional and mercantile classes towards noble privileges and dominance in public life, as many of these classes were familiar with the lives of their peers in commercial cities in the Netherlands and
Great BritainGreat Britain is an island lying to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island. With a population of about 59.6 million people, it is the third most populated island on Earth. Great Britain is surrounded by over 1000 smaller...
; resentment by peasants, wage-earners, and the
bourgeoisieHistorically, the bourgeoisie were a social class of people, characterized by their ownership of capital and the related culture. They were a part of the middle or merchant classes of European feudalism, where their power came from employment, education, and wealth, as distinguished from those...
toward the traditional
seigneurialManorialism or Seigneurialism or Feudal Society was the organizing principle of rural economy and society widely practiced in medieval western and parts of central Europe...
privileges possessed by nobles; resentment of clerical advantage (
anti-clericalismAnti-clericalism is a historical movement that opposes religious institutional power and influence, real or alleged, in all aspects of public and political life, and the involvement of religion in the everyday life of the citizen...
) and aspirations for
freedom of religionFreedom of religion is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance; the concept is generally recognized also to include the freedom to change religion or not to follow any...
, resentment of aristocratic bishops by the poorer rural clergy, continued hatred for Catholic control, and influence on institutions of all kinds by the large
ProtestantProtestantism is a branch within Christianity, containing many denominations with some differing practices and doctrines, that principally originated in the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. It is considered to be one of the major divisions within Christianity, together with the Roman...
minorities; aspirations for liberty and (especially as the Revolution progressed)
republicanismRepublicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of Republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context. The sometimes contrary definitions are all covered in...
; and anger toward the King for firing
Jacques NeckerJacques Necker was a French statesman of Swiss birth and finance minister of Louis XVI, a post he held in the lead-up to the French Revolution in 1789.-Early life:Necker was born in Geneva, Switzerland...
and
A.R.J. TurgotAnne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune, often referred to as Turgot , was a French economist and statesman...
(among other financial advisors), who were popularly seen as representatives of the people.
Finally, perhaps above all, was the almost total failure of
Louis XVILouis XVI of France ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1774 until 1791, and then as King of the French from 1791 to 1792. Suspended and arrested during the Insurrection of 10 August 1792, he was tried by the National Convention, found guilty of treason, and executed by guillotine on 21...
and his advisers to deal effectively with any of these problems.
Financial crisis
Louis XVI ascended to the throne amidst a
financial crisisThe term financial crisis is applied broadly to a variety of situations in which some financial institutions or assets suddenly lose a large part of their value. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many financial crises were associated with banking panics, and many recessions coincided with these...
; the nation was nearing bankruptcy and outlays outpaced income. This was because of France’s involvement in the Seven Years War and its participation in the
American RevolutionThe American Revolution is the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen of Britain's colonies in North America at first rejected the governance of the Parliament of Great Britain, and later the British monarchy itself, to become the sovereign United States of...
. In May 1776, finance minister Turgot was dismissed, after he lost favour. The next year,
Jacques NeckerJacques Necker was a French statesman of Swiss birth and finance minister of Louis XVI, a post he held in the lead-up to the French Revolution in 1789.-Early life:Necker was born in Geneva, Switzerland...
, a foreigner, was appointed Director-General of Finance. He was not made a minister because he was a Protestant, and could not become a naturalized French citizen. Necker realized that the country's tax system subjected some to an unfair burden; numerous exemptions existed for the nobility and clergy. He argued that the country could not be taxed higher, that the nobles and clergy should not be exempt from taxes, and proposed that borrowing would solve the country's fiscal problems. Necker published a report to support this claim that underestimated the deficit by roughly 36,000 livres; and proposed restricting the spending power of the
parlementThe political institutions of the Parlement in ancien régime France developed out of the previous council of the king, the Conseil du roi or curia regis, and consequently had ancient and customary rights of consultation and deliberation. In the thirteenth century, judicial functions were added...
s. This was not received well by King's ministers and Necker, hoping to solidify his position, argued to be accepted as a minister. The King refused, Necker was fired, and
Charles Alexandre de CalonneCharles Alexandre, vicomte de Calonne was a French statesman, best known for his involvement in the French Revolution.-Rise to prominence:...
was appointed to the Directorship.
Calonne initially spent liberally, but he quickly realized the critical financial situation and put forth a new
tax codeIn the UK, every person paid under the PAYE scheme is allocated a tax code by HM Revenue and Customs. This is in the form of a number followed by a letter or letters, or a letter followed by numbers. This code describes to employers how much tax to deduct from an employee. The code is normally...
. The proposal included a consistent
land taxLand value taxation is an ad valorem tax on the value of land. This ignores buildings, improvements, and personal property. Because of this, LVT is different from other property taxes on real estate — the combination of land, buildings, and improvements to land...
, which would include taxation of the nobility and clergy, and the meeting of the Estates was planned for May 1789; a signal that the Bourbon monarchy was no longer absolute.
Estates-General of 1789
The Estates-General was organized into three estates, respectively: the clergy, the nobility, and the rest of France. On the last occasion that the Estates-General had met, in 1614, each estate held one vote, and any two could override the third. The
Parlement of Paris feared the government would attempt to gerrymander an assembly to rig the results. Thus, they required that the Estates be arranged as in 1614.
The 1614 rules differed from practices of local assemblies, wherein each member had one vote and
third estateThe Estates of the realm were the broad divisions of society, usually distinguishing nobility, clergy, and commoners recognized in the Middle Ages and later, in some parts of Europe...
membership was doubled. For instance, in the province of
DauphinéThe Dauphiné or Dauphiné Viennois is a former province in southeastern France, roughly corresponding to the present departments of the Isère, Drôme, and Hautes-Alpes....
the provincial assembly agreed to double the number of members of the third estate, hold membership elections, and allow one vote per member, rather than one vote per estate. The "Committee of Thirty", a body of liberal Parisians, began to agitate against voting by estate. This group, largely composed of the wealthy, argued for the Estates-General to assume the voting mechanisms of Dauphiné. They argued that ancient precedent was not sufficient, because "the people were sovereign". Necker convened a Second Assembly of the Notables, which rejected the notion of double representation by a vote of 111 to 333. The King, however, agreed to the proposition on 27 December; but he left discussion of the weight of each vote to the Estates-General itself.
Elections were held in the spring of 1789; suffrage requirements were: 25 years of age and over six
livres paid in taxes. Strong turnout produced 1,201 delegates, including: "291 nobles, 300 clergy, and 610 members of the Third Estate." To lead delegates, "Books of grievances" (
cahiers de doléances) were compiled to list problems. The books articulated ideas which would have seemed radical only months before; however, most supported the monarchical system in general. Many assumed the Estates-General would approve future taxes, and Enlightenment ideals were relatively rare. Pamphlets by liberal nobles and clergy became widespread after the lifting of press censorship. The Abbé Sieyès, argued the importance of the Third Estate in the pamphlet
Qu'est-ce que le tiers état? (
What is the Third Estate?), published in January 1789. He asserted: "What is the Third Estate? Everything. What has it been until now in the political order? Nothing. What does it want to be? Something."
The Estates-General convened in
VersaillesVersailles , a city renowned for its château, the Palace of Versailles, was the de facto capital of the kingdom of France for over a century, from 1682 to 1789. It is now a wealthy suburb of Paris and remains an important administrative and judicial center...
on 5 May 1789 and opened with a three hour speech by Necker. The basic strategy of the Third Estate was to make sure that no decisions of the Estates-General should be reached in separate chambers, but instead should be made by all deputies from all three estates together (in other words, the strategy was to merge all three estates into one assembly). Thus they demanded that the verification of deputies' credentials should be undertaken in common by all deputies, rather than each estate verifying the credentials of its own members internally; but negotiations with the other estates failed to achieve this. The commoners appealed to the clergy who replied they required more time. Necker asserted that each estate verify credentials and "the king was to act as arbitrator". Negotiations with the other two estates to achieve this, however, were unsuccessful.
National Assembly (1789)
On 10 June 1789 Abbé Sieyès moved that the Third Estate, now meeting as the
Communes (English: "Commons"), proceed with verification of its own powers and invite the other two estates to take part, but not to wait for them. They proceeded to do so two days later, completing the process on 17 June. Then they voted a measure far more radical, declaring themselves the
National AssemblyDuring the French Revolution, the National Assembly , which existed from June 17 to July 9 of 1789, was a transitional body between the Estates-General and the National Constituent Assembly.-Background:...
, an assembly not of the Estates but of "the People." They invited the other orders to join them, but made it clear they intended to conduct the nation's affairs with or without them.
In an attempt to keep control of the process and prevent the Assembly from convening, Louis XVI ordered the closure of the Salle des États where the Assembly met, making an excuse that the carpenters needed to prepare the hall for a royal speech in two days. Weather did not allow an outdoor meeting, so the Assembly moved their deliberations to a nearby indoor
real tennisReal tennis, often called "Royal Tennis" – one of the several sports sometimes called the sport of Kings – is the original indoor racquet sport from which the modern game of lawn tennis, or tennis, is descended...
court, where they proceeded to swear the
Tennis Court OathThe Tennis Court Oath was a pivotal event during the French Revolution. The Oath was a pledge signed by 576 out of the 577 members from the Third Estate and a few members of the First Estate during a meeting of the Estates-General of 20 June 1789 in a tennis court building near the Palace of...
(20 June 1789), under which they agreed not to separate until they had given France a
constitutionA constitution is a set of rules for government—often codified as a written document—that establishes principles of an autonomous political entity. In the case of countries, this term refers specifically to a national constitution defining the fundamental political principles, and establishing the...
. A majority of the representatives of the clergy soon joined them, as did 47 members of the nobility. By 27 June, the royal party had overtly given in, although the military began to arrive in large numbers around
ParisParis is the capital of France and the country's most populous city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and
VersaillesVersailles , a city renowned for its château, the Palace of Versailles, was the de facto capital of the kingdom of France for over a century, from 1682 to 1789. It is now a wealthy suburb of Paris and remains an important administrative and judicial center...
. Messages of support for the Assembly poured in from Paris and other French cities.
Storming of the Bastille
By this time, Necker had earned the enmity of many members of the French court for his support and guidance to the Third Estate. Marie Antoinette, the King's younger brother the
Comte d'ArtoisCharles X ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 16 September 1824 until 2 August 1830. His short rule of almost six years came to an end when he instituted his July Ordinances in July 1830, suspending most of the liberties granted in the Charter of 1814...
, and other conservative members of the King's
privy councilA privy council is a body that advises the head of state of a nation on how to exercise their executive authority, typically, but not always, in the context of a monarchic government...
urged him to dismiss Necker from his role as King's financial advisor. On 11 July 1789, after Necker suggested that the royal family live according to a budget to conserve funds, the King fired him, and completely reconstructed the finance ministry at the same time.
Many Parisians presumed Louis's actions to be the start of a royal coup by the conservatives and began open rebellion when they heard the news the next day. They were also afraid that arriving soldiers—mostly foreigners under French service rather than native French troops—had been summoned to shut down the
National Constituent AssemblyThe National Constituent Assembly was formed from the National Assembly on 9 July 1789, during the first stages of the French Revolution. It dissolved on 30 September 1791 and was succeeded by the Legislative Assembly.-Background:...
. The Assembly, meeting at Versailles, went into nonstop session to prevent eviction from their meeting place once again. Paris was soon consumed with riots, chaos, and widespread looting. The mobs soon had the support of the
French GuardThe Gardes Françaises was one of the two non-ceremonial infantry regiments in the "Maison du Roi" of the French Army under the Ancien Régime. The other regiment was the Gardes Suisses, which made the Gardes Françaises the only one recruited from France.-History:The regiment was created in 1563 by...
, including arms and trained soldiers.
On 14 July, the insurgents set their eyes on the large weapons and ammunition cache inside the
BastilleThe Bastille was a fortress-prison in Paris, known formally as Bastille Saint-Antoine—Number 232, Rue Saint-Antoine—best known today because of the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, which along with the Tennis Court Oath is considered the beginning of the French Revolution. The event was...
fortress, which was also perceived to be a symbol of monarchist tyranny. After several hours of combat, the prison fell that afternoon. Despite ordering a cease fire, which prevented a mutual massacre, Governor Marquis Bernard de Launay was beaten, stabbed and decapitated; his head was placed on a pike and paraded about the city. Although the fortress had held only seven prisoners (four forgers, two noblemen kept for immoral behavior, and a murder suspect), the Bastille served as a potent symbol of everything hated under the
Ancien RégimeAncien Régime refers primarily to the aristocratic, social, and political system established in France under the Valois and Bourbon dynasties...
. Returning to the
Hôtel de VilleThe Hôtel de Ville in Paris, France, is the building housing the City of Paris's administration. Standing on the place de l'Hôtel de Ville in the city's IVe arrondissement, it has been the location of the municipality of Paris since 1357...
(city hall), the mob accused the
prévôtA provost is the ceremonial head of many Scottish local authorities, and under the name prévôt was a governmental position of varying importance in Ancien Regime France.-History:...
des marchands (roughly, mayor)
Jacques de FlessellesJacques de Flesselles was a French public servant and one of the first victims of the French Revolution.On 21 April 1789, after serving as Intendant of Lyon , he became the last provost of the merchants of Paris, a post roughly equivalent to mayor...
of treachery and he was shot.
The King and his military supporters backed down, at least for the time being. La Fayette took up command of the National Guard at Paris. Jean-Sylvain Bailly, president of the Assembly at the time of the
Tennis Court OathThe Tennis Court Oath was a pivotal event during the French Revolution. The Oath was a pledge signed by 576 out of the 577 members from the Third Estate and a few members of the First Estate during a meeting of the Estates-General of 20 June 1789 in a tennis court building near the Palace of...
, became the city's mayor under a new governmental structure known as the
commune. The King visited Paris, where, on 17 July he accepted a
tricoloreThe national flag of France is a tricolour featuring three vertical bands coloured blue , white, and red...
cockadeA cockade is a knot of ribbons, or other circular- or oval-shaped symbol of distinctive colors which is usually worn on a hat.-Cockades of the revolutionaries:...
, to cries of
Vive la Nation [Long live the Nation] and
Vive le Roi [Long live the King].
Necker was recalled to power, but his triumph was short-lived. An astute financier but a less astute politician, Necker overplayed his hand by demanding and obtaining a general amnesty, losing much of the people's favour. He also felt he could save France all by himself, despite having few ideas.
Nobles were not assured by this apparent reconciliation of King and people. They began to flee the country as
émigréÉmigré is a French term that literally refers to a person who has "migrated out," but often carries a connotation of politico-social self-exile....
s, some of whom began plotting civil war within the kingdom and agitating for a European coalition against France.
By late July, insurrection and the spirit of
popular sovereigntyPopular sovereignty or the sovereignty of the people is the belief that the legitimacy of the state is created by the will or consent of its people, who are the source of all political power. It is closely associated with the social contract philosophers, among whom are Thomas Hobbes, John Locke,...
spread throughout France. In rural areas, many went beyond this: some burned title-deeds and no small number of
châteauxA château is a manor house or residence of the lord of the manor or a country house of nobility or gentry, with or without fortifications, originally—and still most frequently—in French-speaking regions...
, as part of a general agrarian insurrection known as "la Grande Peur" (the
Great FearThe "Great Fear" occurred from July 20 to August 5, 1789 in France at the start of the French Revolution. Rural unrest had been present in France since the worsening grain shortage of the spring, and the grain supplies were now guarded by local militias as bands of vagrants roamed the countryside...
). In addition, plotting at Versailles and the large numbers of men on the roads of France as a result of unemployment led to wild rumours and paranoia (particularly in the rural areas) that caused widespread unrest and civil disturbances and contributed to the Great Fear.
Working toward a constitution
On 4 August 1789 the National Constituent Assembly abolished
feudalismFeudalism is a decentralized sociopolitical structure in which a weak monarchy attempts to control the lands of the realm through reciprocal agreements with regional leaders...
(although at that point there had been sufficient peasant revolts to almost end feudalism already), in what is known as the
August DecreesThe August Decrees were 19 decrees made in August 1789 by the National Assembly during the French Revolution.-Background:The fall of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 was followed by a mass uproar spreading from Paris to the countryside. Noble families were attacked and the aristocratic manors were...
, sweeping away both the seigneurial rights of the Second Estate and the
titheA tithe is a one-tenth part of something, paid as a voluntary contribution or as a tax or levy, usually to support a religious organization. Today, tithes are normally voluntary and paid in cash, cheques, or stocks, whereas historically tithes could be paid in kind, such as agricultural products...
s gathered by the First Estate. In the course of a few hours, nobles, clergy, towns, provinces, companies, and cities lost their special privileges.
Looking to the
Declaration of Independence of the United StatesThe United States Declaration of Independence is a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain were now independent states, and thus no longer a part of the British Empire...
for a model, on 26 August 1789, the Assembly published the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the CitizenThe Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen is a fundamental document of the French Revolution, defining the individual and collective rights of all the estates of the realm as universal. Influenced by the doctrine of natural rights, the rights of Man are universal: valid at all times...
. Like the U.S. Declaration, it comprised a statement of principles rather than a
constitutionA constitution is a set of rules for government—often codified as a written document—that establishes principles of an autonomous political entity. In the case of countries, this term refers specifically to a national constitution defining the fundamental political principles, and establishing the...
with legal effect. The National Constituent Assembly functioned not only as a
legislatureA legislature is a type of deliberative assembly with the power to pass, amend and repeal laws. The law created by a legislature is called legislation or statutory law...
, but also as a body to draft a new constitution.
Necker, Mounier, Lally-Tollendal and others argued unsuccessfully for a
senateA senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a legislature or parliament. There have been many such bodies in history, since senate means the assembly of the eldest and wiser members of the society and ruling class...
, with members appointed by the crown on the nomination of the people. The bulk of the nobles argued for an aristocratic
upper houseAn upper house is one of two chambers of a bicameral legislature, the other chamber being the lower house.- Possible specific characteristics :An upper house is usually distinct from the lower house in at least one of the following respects:...
elected by the nobles. The popular party carried the day: France would have a single, unicameral assembly. The King retained only a "suspensive veto"; he could delay the implementation of a law, but not block it absolutely. The Assembly eventually replaced the historic
provincesThe Kingdom of France was organised into provinces until March 4, 1790, when the establishment of the département system superseded provinces...
with 83
départements, uniformly administered and roughly equal in area and population.
Originally summoned to deal with a financial crisis, by late 1789, the Assembly had focused on other matters and only worsened the deficit.
Honoré MirabeauHonoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau was a French writer, popular orator and statesman. During the French Revolution, he was a moderate, favoring a constitutional monarchy built on the model of the United Kingdom...
now led the move to address this matter, and the Assembly gave Necker complete financial dictatorship.
Women's March on Versailles
Fueled by rumors of a reception by the King's bodyguards 1 October 1789 in which the national cockade had been trampled upon, on 5 October 1789 crowds of women began to assemble at Parisian markets. The women first marched to the
Hôtel de VilleThe Hôtel de Ville in Paris, France, is the building housing the City of Paris's administration. Standing on the place de l'Hôtel de Ville in the city's IVe arrondissement, it has been the location of the municipality of Paris since 1357...
, demanding that city officials address their concerns. The women were responding to the harsh economic situations they faced, especially bread shortages. They also demanded an end to Royalist efforts to block the National Assembly, and for the King and his administration to move to Paris as a sign of good faith in addressing the widespread poverty.
Getting unsatisfactory responses from city officials, as many as 7,000 women joined the march to Versailles, bringing with them pieces of cannon and a variety of smaller weapons. Twenty thousand National Guardsmen under the command of La Fayette responded to keep order, and members of the mob stormed the palace, killing several guards. La Fayette ultimately convinced the king to accede to the demand of the crowd that the monarchy relocate to Paris.
On 6 October 1789, the King and the royal family moved from Versailles to Paris under the protection of the National Guards, thus legitimizing the National Assembly.
Revolution and the Church
The Revolution brought about a massive shifting of powers from the
Roman Catholic ChurchThe Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church. With more than a billion members, over half of all Christians and more than one-sixth of the world's population, the Catholic Church is a communion of the Western, or Latin Rite Church, and...
to the state. Under the
Ancien Régime, the Church had been the largest landowner in the country. Legislation enacted in 1790 abolished the Church's authority to levy a
taxTo tax is to impose a financial charge or other levy upon a taxpayer by a state or the functional equivalent of a state such that failure to pay is punishable by law.Taxes are also imposed by many subnational entities...
on crops, known as the
dîmeA tithe is a one-tenth part of something, paid as a voluntary contribution or as a tax or levy, usually to support a religious organization. Today, tithes are normally voluntary and paid in cash, cheques, or stocks, whereas historically tithes could be paid in kind, such as agricultural products...
, cancelled special privileges for the clergy, and confiscated Church property. To no small extent, the Assembly addressed the financial crisis by having the nation take over the property of the Church (while taking on the Church's expenses), through the law of 2 December 1789. In order to rapidly monetize such an enormous amount of property, the government introduced a new paper currency,
assignatAssignats were paper money issued by the National Constituent Assembly in France during the French Revolution. The assignats were issued after the confiscation of church properties in 1790 because the government was bankrupt. The government thought that the financial problems could be solved by...
s, backed by the confiscated church lands. Further legislation on 13 February 1790 abolished
monastic vowsReligious vows are the public vows made by the members of the religious life – cenobitic and eremitic – of the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Eastern Orthodox Churches, whereby they confirm their public profession of the Evangelical Counsels or Benedictine equivalent...
. The
Civil Constitution of the ClergyThe Civil Constitution of the Clergy was a law passed on 12 July 1790 during the French Revolution, that subordinated the Roman Catholic Church in France to the French government....
, passed on 12 July 1790 (although not signed by the King until 26 December 1790), turned the remaining clergy into employees of the State and required that they take an oath of loyalty to the constitution, taking
GallicanismGallicanism is the belief that popular civil authority—often represented by the monarchs' authority or the State's authority—over the Catholic Church is comparable to that of the Pope's...
to its logical conclusion by making the Catholic Church in France a department of the state, and clergy state employees.
In response to this legislation, the archbishop of Aix and
François de BonalFrançois de Bonal was Bishop of Clermont.He had been Vicar-General of the diocese of Agen and Director of the Carmelite Nuns in France when he was made Bishop of Clermont, in 1776...
, the bishop of Clermont, led a walkout of clergy from the National Constituent Assembly. The
Pope Pius VIPope Pius VI , born Count Giovanni Angelo Braschi, Pope from 1775 to 1799, was born at Cesena.-Early years:...
never accepted the new arrangement, and it led to a schism between those clergy who swore the required oath and accepted the new arrangement ("jurors" or "constitutional clergy") and the "non-jurors" or "refractory priests" who refused to do so. The ensuing years saw violent repression of the clergy, including the imprisonment and massacre of
priestA priest or priestess is a person having the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities. Their office or position is the priesthood, a term which may also apply to such persons collectively.Priests and priestesses...
s throughout France. The
Concordat of 1801The Concordat of 1801 is a reflection of an agreement between Napoleon Bonaparte and Pope Pius VII that reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church as the majority church of France and restored some of its civil status....
between Napoleon and the Church ended the dechristianisation period and established the rules for a relationship between the Catholic Church and the French State that lasted until it was abrogated by the
Third RepublicThe French Third Republic was the republican government of France between the end of the Second French Empire in 1870 and the Vichy Regime after the invasion of France by the German...
via the
separation of church and stateThe 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and State was passed by the Chamber of Deputies on 9 December 1905. Enacted during the Third Republic, it established state secularism in France...
on 11 December 1905.
Appearance of factions
Factions within the Assembly began to clarify. The
aristocratAristocracy is a form of government, in which a few of the most prominent citizens rule. This may be a hereditary elite, or it may be by a system of cooption where a council of prominent citizens add leading soldiers, merchants, land owners, priests, and lawyers to their number...
Jacques Antoine Marie de CazalèsJacques Antoine Marie de Cazalès was a French orator and politician.-Biography:He was born at Grenade, Haute-Garonne, in a family of the lower nobility....
and the
abbéAbbé is the French word for abbot. It is the title for lower-ranking Catholic clergymen in France....
Jean-Sifrein MauryJean-Sifrein Maury , was a French cardinal and Archbishop of Paris.-Biography:The son of a poor cobbler, he was born on at Valréas in the Comtat-Venaissin, the enclave within France that belonged to the pope. His acuteness was observed by the priests of the seminary at Avignon, where he was...
led what would become known as the
right wingIn politics, right-wing, political right, rightist and the Right are terms used to describe a number of positions and ideologies. They are most commonly used to refer to support for preserving traditional or cultural values and customs or for maintaining some form of social hierarchy or private...
, the opposition to revolution (this party sat on the right-hand side of the Assembly). The "Royalist democrats" or
monarchiens, allied with
NeckerJacques Necker was a French statesman of Swiss birth and finance minister of Louis XVI, a post he held in the lead-up to the French Revolution in 1789.-Early life:Necker was born in Geneva, Switzerland...
, inclined toward organising France along lines similar to the
British constitutionThe constitution of the United Kingdom is the set of laws and principles under which the United Kingdom is governed.The UK has no single constitutional document comparable to those of most other nations. It is therefore often said that the country has an "unwritten", uncodified or de facto...
al model; they included
Jean Joseph MounierJean Joseph Mounier , was a French politician and judge.He was born at Grenoble . He studied law, and in 1783 obtained a judgeship at Grenoble. He took part in the struggle between the parlements and the court in 1788, and promoted the meeting of the estates of Dauphiné at Vizille , on the eve of...
, the
Comte de Lally-TollendalTrophime-Gérard, marquis de Lally-Tollendal was a French politician.-Biography:Born in Paris, he was the legitimized son of the Thomas Arthur de Lally, and only discovered the secret of his birth on the day of his father's execution, when he devoted himself to clearing his father's memory...
, the
comte de Clermont-TonnerreStanislas Marie Adélaïde, comte de Clermont-Tonnerre was a French politician.-Early life and career:...
, and
Pierre Victor Malouet, comte de VirieuPierre Victor, baron Malouet , a French publicist and politician, was born at Riom ....
.
The "National Party", representing the centre or centre-left of the assembly, included Honoré Mirabeau, La Fayette, and Bailly; while
Adrien DuportAdrien Duport was a French politician.He was born in Paris. He became an influential advocate in the parlement, and was prominent in opposition to the ministers Calonne and Loménie de Brienne....
, Barnave and Alexandre Lameth represented somewhat more extreme views. Almost alone in his radicalism on the left was the
ArrasArras is the capital of the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France. The historic centre of the Artois region, its local speech is characterized as a Picard dialect...
lawyer
Maximilien RobespierreMaximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre is one of the best-known and most influential figures of the French Revolution...
. Abbé
SieyèsEmmanuel Joseph Sieyès or Abbe Sieyes was a French Roman Catholic abbé and clergyman, one of the chief theorists of the French Revolution, French Consulate, and First French Empire...
led in proposing legislation in this period and successfully forged consensus for some time between the political centre and the
leftIn politics, left-wing, political left, leftist and the Left are terms used to describe a number of positions and ideologies. They are most commonly used to refer to support for changing traditional social orders or for creating a more egalitarian distribution of wealth and privilege...
. In Paris, various committees, the mayor, the assembly of representatives, and the individual districts each claimed authority independent of the others. The increasingly
middle-classThe middle class are any class in the middle of a social schema. In Weberian socio-economic terms they are the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socioeconomically between the working class and upper class. In Marxist terms, middle class commonly refers to either the...
National GuardThe National Guard was the name given at the time of the French Revolution to the militias formed in each city, in imitation of the National Guard created in Paris. It was a military force separate from the regular army...
under La Fayette also slowly emerged as a power in its own right, as did other self-generated assemblies.
Intrigues and radicalism
The Assembly abolished the symbolic paraphernalia of the
Ancien Régime—armorial bearings, liveries, etc.—which further alienated the more conservative nobles, and added to the ranks of the
émigréÉmigré is a French term that literally refers to a person who has "migrated out," but often carries a connotation of politico-social self-exile....
s. On 14 July 1790, and for several days following, crowds in the
Champ de MarsThe Champ de Mars is a large public green-space in Paris, France, located in the 7th arrondissement, between the Eiffel Tower to the northwest and the École Militaire to the southeast. The park is named after the Campus Martius of Rome. Champ de Mars means "Field of Mars", after Mars the god of...
celebrated the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille with a
Fête de la FédérationThe Fête de la Fédération of the 14 July 1790 was a huge feast and official event to celebrate the establishment of the short-lived constitutional monarchy in France and what people of the time considered to be the happy conclusion of the French Revolution, the outcome hoped for by the monarchiens...
;
TalleyrandCharles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, 1st Sovereign Prince of Beneventum was a French diplomat. He worked successfully from the regime of Louis XVI, through the French Revolution and then under Napoleon I, Louis XVIII, Charles X, and Louis-Philippe...
performed a mass; participants swore an oath of "fidelity to the nation, the law, and the king"; and the King and the royal family actively participated.
The electors had originally chosen the members of the Estates-General to serve for a single year. However, by the terms of the
Tennis Court OathThe Tennis Court Oath was a pivotal event during the French Revolution. The Oath was a pledge signed by 576 out of the 577 members from the Third Estate and a few members of the First Estate during a meeting of the Estates-General of 20 June 1789 in a tennis court building near the Palace of...
, the
communes had bound themselves to meet continuously until France had a constitution. Right-wing elements now argued for a new election, but Mirabeau carried the day, asserting that the status of the assembly had fundamentally changed, and that no new election should take place before completing the constitution.
In late 1790, several small
counter-revolutionaryA counter-revolutionary is anyone who opposes a revolution, particularly those who act after a revolution to try to overturn or reverse it, in full or in part...
uprisings broke out and efforts took place to turn all or part of the army against the Revolution. These uniformly failed. The royal court "encouraged every anti-revolutionary enterprise and avowed none."
The army faced considerable internal turmoil: General
BouilléFrançois Claude Amour, marquis de Bouillé was a French general.Born at Cluzel-Saint-Èble, Bouillé served in the Seven Years' War , and as governor in the Antilles conducted operations against the British in the American Revolutionary War...
successfully put down a small rebellion, which added to his (accurate) reputation for counter-revolutionary sympathies. The new military code, under which promotion depended on seniority and proven competence (rather than on nobility) alienated some of the existing officer corps, who joined the ranks of the émigrés or became counter-revolutionaries from within.
This period saw the rise of the political "clubs" in French politics, foremost among these the
Jacobin ClubThe Jacobin Club was the largest and most powerful political club of the French Revolution. It originated as the Club Benthorn, formed at Versailles as a group of Breton deputies to the Estates General of 1789. At the height of its influence, there were thousands of chapters throughout France,...
; 152 clubs had affiliated with the Jacobins by 10 August 1790. As the Jacobins became more of a broad popular organisation, some of its founders abandoned it to form the Club of '89. Royalists established first the short-lived
Club des Impartiaux and later the
Club Monarchique. The latter attempted unsuccessfully to curry public favour by distributing bread. Nonetheless, they became the frequent target of protests and even riots, and the Paris municipal authorities finally closed down the Club Monarchique in January 1791.
Amidst these intrigues, the Assembly continued to work on developing a constitution. A new judicial organisation made all magistracies temporary and independent of the throne. The legislators abolished hereditary offices, except for the monarchy itself.
Jury trialA jury trial is a legal proceeding in which a jury either makes a decision or makes findings of fact which are then applied by a judge...
s started for criminal cases. The King would have the unique power to propose war, with the legislature then deciding whether to declare war. The Assembly abolished all internal trade barriers and suppressed guilds, masterships, and workers' organisations: any individual gained the right to practice a trade through the purchase of a license; strikes became illegal.
In the winter of 1791, the Assembly considered, for the first time, legislation against the
émigrés. The debate pitted the safety of the State against the liberty of individuals to leave. Mirabeau carried the day against the measure, which he referred to as "worthy of being placed in the code of Draco". But Mirabeau died on 2 April 1791 and, before the end of the year, the new Legislative Assembly would adopt this "draconian" measure.
Royal flight to Varennes
Louis XVI, opposed to the course of the Revolution, but rejecting the potentially treacherous aid of the other monarchs of Europe, cast his lot with General Bouillé, who condemned both the emigration and the assembly, and promised him refuge and support in his camp at
MontmédyMontmédy is a commune in the Meuse department in Lorraine in north-eastern France.-Citadel of Montmédy:In 1221 the first castle of Montmédy was built on top of a hill by the Count of Chiny. Montmédy became soon the capital of his territory - later it belonged to Luxembourg, Burgundy, Austria and...
. On the night of 20 June 1791 the royal family fled the Tuileries wearing the clothes of servants, while their servants dressed as nobles.
However, the next day the King was recognised and arrested at Varennes (in the
MeuseMeuse is a department in northeast France, named after the Meuse River.-History:Meuse is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790...
département) late on 21 June. He and his family were paraded back to Paris under guard, still dressed as servants.
PétionJérôme Pétion de Villeneuve was a French writer and politician.Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve was the son of a at Chartres. Though it is known that he was trained as a lawyer, very few specifics are known about Petion’s early life, as he was virtually unknown prior to the French Revolution...
,
Latour-MaubourgMarie Victor Nicolas de Fay, marquis de Latour-Maubourg was a French cavalry commander starting under the Ancien Régime of France, and rising to prominence during the First French Empire...
, and Antoine Pierre Joseph Marie Barnave, representing the Assembly, met the royal family at
ÉpernayÉpernay is a commune in the Marne department in northern France.-Administration:Épernay is a sub-prefecture of the department and seat of an arrondissement.-History:...
and returned with them. From this time, Barnave became a counselor and supporter of the royal family. When they reached Paris, the crowd remained silent. The Assembly provisionally suspended the King. He and Queen Marie Antoinette remained held under guard.
Completing the constitution
As most of the Assembly still favoured a
constitutional monarchyA constitutional monarchy is a form of government in which a monarch acts as head of state within the parameters of a written , unwritten or blended constitution...
rather than a
republicA republic is a form of government in which the head of state is not a monarch and the people have an impact on its government. The word 'republic' is derived from the Latin phrase res publica which can be translated as "a public affair".Both modern and ancient republics vary widely in their...
, the various groupings reached a compromise which left Louis XVI as little more than a figurehead: he had perforce to swear an oath to the constitution, and a decree declared that retracting the oath, heading an army for the purpose of making war upon the nation, or permitting anyone to do so in his name would amount to
de facto abdication.
Jacques Pierre BrissotJacques Pierre Brissot , who assumed the name of de Warville, was a leading member of the Girondist movement during the French Revolution. Some sources give his name as Jean Pierre Brissot.-Biography:...
drafted a petition, insisting that in the eyes of the nation Louis XVI was deposed since his flight. An immense crowd gathered in the
Champ de MarsThe Champ de Mars is a large public green-space in Paris, France, located in the 7th arrondissement, between the Eiffel Tower to the northwest and the École Militaire to the southeast. The park is named after the Campus Martius of Rome. Champ de Mars means "Field of Mars", after Mars the god of...
to sign the petition.
Georges DantonGeorges Jacques Danton was a leading figure in the early stages of the French Revolution and the first President of the Committee of Public Safety. Danton's role in the onset of the Revolution has been disputed; many historians describe him as "the chief force in theoverthrow of the monarchy and...
and
Camille DesmoulinsLucie Simplice Camille Benoist Desmoulins was a French journalist and politician who played an important role in the French Revolution. He was closely associated with Georges Danton.-Early life:...
gave fiery speeches. The Assembly called for the municipal authorities to "preserve public order". The National Guard under La Fayette's command confronted the crowd. The soldiers responded to a barrage of stones by firing into the crowd, thus killing between 13 and 50 people.
In the wake of this massacre the authorities closed many of the patriotic clubs, as well as radical newspapers such as
Jean-Paul MaratJean-Paul Marat , was a Swiss-born physician, political theorist and scientist better known as a radical journalist and politician from the French Revolution. His journalism was renowned for its fiery character and uncompromising stance towards the new government, "enemies of the revolution" and...
's
L'Ami du PeupleL'Ami du peuple was a newspaper written by Jean-Paul Marat during the French Revolution. In it he constantly wrote his political views about the things happening on France....
. Danton fled to England; Desmoulins and Marat went into hiding.
Meanwhile, a new threat arose from abroad:
Holy Roman Emperor Leopold IILeopold II , born Peter Leopold Joseph Anton Joachim Pius Gotthard, was Holy Roman Emperor from 1790 to 1792, King of Hungary, archduke of Austria, and Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1765 to 1790. He was a son of Emperor Francis I and his wife, Empress Maria Theresa...
,
Frederick William II of PrussiaFrederick William II was the fourth King of Prussia, reigning from 1786 until his death...
, and the King's brother
Charles-Philippe, comte d'ArtoisCharles X ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 16 September 1824 until 2 August 1830. His short rule of almost six years came to an end when he instituted his July Ordinances in July 1830, suspending most of the liberties granted in the Charter of 1814...
issued the
Declaration of PillnitzThe Declaration of Pillnitz on August 27, 1791, was a statement issued at the Castle of Pillnitz in Saxony by the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II and Frederick William II of Prussia....
which considered the cause of Louis XVI as their own, demanded his absolute liberty and implied an invasion of France on his behalf if the revolutionary authorities refused its conditions. The French people expressed no respect for the dictates of foreign monarchs, and the threat of force merely caused the militarisation of the frontiers.
Even before his "Flight to Varennes", the Assembly members had determined to debar themselves from the legislature that would succeed them, the Legislative Assembly. They now gathered the various constitutional laws they had passed into a single constitution, showed remarkable strength in choosing not to use this as an occasion for major revisions, and submitted it to the recently restored Louis XVI, who accepted it, writing "I engage to maintain it at home, to defend it from all attacks from abroad, and to cause its execution by all the means it places at my disposal". The King addressed the Assembly and received enthusiastic applause from members and spectators. The Assembly set the end of its term for 29 September 1791.
Mignet argued that the "constitution of 1791... was the work of the middle class, then the strongest; for, as is well known, the predominant force ever takes possession of institutions... In this constitution the people was the source of all powers, but it exercised none."
Failure of the constitutional monarchy
Under the
Constitution of 1791The short-lived French Constitution of 1791 was the first written constitution of France. One of the basic precepts of the revolution was adopting constitutionality and establishing popular sovereignty, following the steps of the United States of America....
, France would function as a
constitutional monarchyA constitutional monarchy is a form of government in which a monarch acts as head of state within the parameters of a written , unwritten or blended constitution...
. The King had to share power with the elected
Legislative AssemblyDuring the French Revolution, the Legislative Assembly was the legislature of France from October 1 1791 to September 1792. It provided the focus of political debate and revolutionary law-making between the periods of the National Constituent Assembly and of the National Convention.-Background:The...
, but he still retained his royal veto and the ability to select ministers. The Legislative Assembly first met on 1 October 1791, and degenerated into chaos less than a year later. In the words of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica: "In the attempt to govern, the Assembly failed altogether. It left behind an empty
treasuryA treasury is any place where the currency or items of high monetary value are kept. The term was first used in Classical times to describe the votive buildings erected to house gifts to the gods, such as the Siphnian Treasury in Delphi or many similar buildings erected in Olympia, Greece by...
, an undisciplined
armyAn army An army An army (from Latin armata "armed (things)" via Old French armée, "armed" (feminine), in the broadest sense, is the land-based Military of a nation. It may also include other branches of the military such as the air force via means of aviation corps...
and
navyA navy is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval warfare and amphibious warfare; namely, lake- or ocean-borne combat operations and related functions...
, and a people debauched by safe and successful riot." The Legislative Assembly consisted of about 165
FeuillantThe Feuillants were a political grouping that emerged during the French Revolution. It came into existence from a split within the Jacobins from those opposing the overthrow of the king and proposing a constitutional monarchy. The deputies publicly split with the Jacobins when they published a...
s (constitutional monarchists) on the
rightIn politics, right-wing, political right, rightist and the Right are terms used to describe a number of positions and ideologies. They are most commonly used to refer to support for preserving traditional or cultural values and customs or for maintaining some form of social hierarchy or private...
, about 330
GirondistThe Girondists were a political faction in France within the Legislative Assembly and the National Convention during the French Revolution...
s (liberal republicans) and
JacobinJacobin may refer to:* Jacobin , a member of the Jacobin club, or political radical, generally* The Jacobin Club, a political club during the French Revolution* Jacobin , a breed of Domestic Pigeon...
s (radical revolutionaries) on the
leftIn politics, left-wing, political left, leftist and the Left are terms used to describe a number of positions and ideologies. They are most commonly used to refer to support for changing traditional social orders or for creating a more egalitarian distribution of wealth and privilege...
, and about 250 deputies unaffiliated with either faction. Early on, the King vetoed legislation that threatened the
émigrés with death and that decreed that every
non-juring clergymanA non-juror is a person who refuses to swear a particular oath.* In British history, non-jurors refused to swear allegiance to William and Mary; see Nonjuring schism...
must take within eight days the civic oath mandated by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Over the course of a year, such disagreements would lead to a
constitutional crisisA constitutional crisis is a severe breakdown in the orderly operation of government. Generally speaking, a constitutional crisis is a situation in which separate factions within a government disagree about the extent to which each of these factions hold sovereignty...
.
Constitutional crisis
On the night of 10 August 1792, insurgents, supported by a new revolutionary
Paris CommuneThe Paris Commune during the French Revolution was the government of Paris from 1789 until 1795, and especially from 1792 until 1795. Established in the Hôtel de Ville just after the storming of the Bastille, the Commune became insurrectionary in the summer of 1792, essentially refusing to take...
, assailed the Tuileries. The King and queen ended up prisoners and a
rump sessionA Rump legislature is a legislature formed of part, usually a minority, of the legislators originally elected or appointed to office.The word "rump" normally refers to the back end of an animal; its use meaning "remnant" was first recorded in the context of the 17th century Rump Parliament in England...
of the Legislative Assembly suspended the monarchy; little more than a third of the deputies were present, almost all of them Jacobins.
What remained of a national government depended on the support of the insurrectionary Commune. The Commune sent gangs into the prisons to try arbitrarily and butcher 1400 victims, and addressed a circular letter to the other cities of France inviting them to follow this example. The Assembly could offer only feeble resistance. This situation persisted until the Convention, charged with writing a new constitution, met on 20 September 1792 and became the new
de facto government of France. The next day it
abolished the monarchyDuring the French Revolution, the proclamation of the abolition of the monarchy was a proclamation by the National Convention of France announcing that it had abolished the French monarchy on 21 September 1792.-Prelude:...
and declared a republic. This date was later retroactively adopted as the beginning of
Year OneThe term "Year One" in political history usually refers to the institution of radical, revolutionary change. This usage dates from the time of the French Revolution: after the abolition of the French monarchy , the National Convention instituted the new French Revolutionary Calendar, declaring that...
of the
French Republican CalendarThe French Republican Calendar or French Revolutionary Calendar was a calendar proposed during the French Revolution, and used by the French government for about 12 years from late 1793 to 1805, and for 18 days in 1871 in Paris.-History:...
.
War and Counter-Revolution (1792–1797)
The politics of the period inevitably drove France towards war with
AustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.3 million people in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west...
and its allies. The King, the Feuillants and the Girondins specifically wanted to wage war. The King (and many Feuillants with him) expected war would increase his personal popularity; he also foresaw an opportunity to exploit any defeat: either result would make him stronger. The Girondins wanted to export the Revolution throughout Europe and, by extension, to defend the Revolution within France. Only some of the radical
JacobinJacobin may refer to:* Jacobin , a member of the Jacobin club, or political radical, generally* The Jacobin Club, a political club during the French Revolution* Jacobin , a breed of Domestic Pigeon...
s opposed war, preferring to consolidate and expand the Revolution at home. The Austrian
emperorAn emperor is a monarch, usually the sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress is the female equivalent. As a title, "empress" may indicate the wife of an emperor or a woman who rules in her own right...
Leopold IILeopold II , born Peter Leopold Joseph Anton Joachim Pius Gotthard, was Holy Roman Emperor from 1790 to 1792, King of Hungary, archduke of Austria, and Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1765 to 1790. He was a son of Emperor Francis I and his wife, Empress Maria Theresa...
, brother of Marie Antoinette, may have wished to avoid war, but he died on 1 March 1792. France declared war on
AustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.3 million people in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west...
(20 April 1792) and
PrussiaPrussia was a historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries this state had substantial influence on German and European history...
joined on the Austrian side a few weeks later. The invading Prussian army faced little resistance until checked at the
Battle of ValmyThe Battle of Valmy, also known as the Cannonade of Valmy, was a tactically indecisive artillery engagement, but strategically it ensured the survival of the French Revolution...
(20 September 1792), and forced to withdraw. However, by this time, France stood in turmoil and the monarchy had effectively become a thing of the past.
Execution of Louis XVI
In the Brunswick Manifesto, the Imperial and Prussian armies threatened retaliation on the French population if it were to resist their advance or the reinstatement of the monarchy. This made Louis appear to be conspiring with the enemies of France. 17 January 1793 saw Louis condemned to death for "conspiracy against the public liberty and the general safety" by a close majority in Convention: 361 voted to execute the king, 288 voted against, and another 72 voted to execute him subject to a variety of delaying conditions. The former Louis XVI, now simply named
Citoyen Louis Capet (Citizen Louis Capet), was executed by
guillotineThe guillotine was a device used for carrying out executions by decapitation. It consists of a tall upright frame from which a blade is suspended. This blade is raised with a rope and then allowed to drop, severing the victim's head from their body...
on 21 January 1793 in the area now called the
Place de la ConcordeThe Place de la Concorde is one of the major public squares in Paris, France. In fact, in terms of area, its 86,400 square metres make it the largest square in the French capital...
. After he was executed, some of the citizens who witnessed the beheading ran forth to have their clothes soaked in the late King's blood, dripping from his head. Others in the crowd went mad, slit their throats or jumped into the river
SeineThe Seine is a slow-flowing major river and commercial waterway within the regions of Île-de-France and Haute-Normandie in France and famous as a romantic backdrop in photographs of Paris, France. It is also a tourist attraction, with excursion boats offering sightseeing tours of the Rive Droite...
– according to historian
Adam ZamoyskiCount Adam Zamoyski is a historian and a member of the ancient Zamoyski family of Polish nobility.-Life:Zamoyski was born in New York City, but was raised in England and was educated at Downside School and Queen's College in Oxford. He is Chairman of the Board of the Princes Czartoryski Foundation...
this was not so much due to their love for the King but as he was seen as a representative of God on earth. In his book
The Rebel,
Albert CamusAlbert Camus was a French author, philosopher, and journalist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. He is often cited as a proponent of existentialism , but Camus himself refused this particular label...
wrote that the execution was the turning point of French contemporary history, "an act that secularized the French world and banished God from the subsequent history of the French people".
The 21 January execution led to more wars with other European countries. Louis' Austrian-born queen,
Marie AntoinetteMarie Antoinette ; was an Archduchess of Austria and the Queen of France and Navarre. She was the fifteenth and penultimate child of Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Francis I....
, would follow him to the
guillotineThe guillotine was a device used for carrying out executions by decapitation. It consists of a tall upright frame from which a blade is suspended. This blade is raised with a rope and then allowed to drop, severing the victim's head from their body...
on 16 October.
Economy
When war went badly, prices rose and the
sans-culottesSans-culottes was a term created 1790 - 1792 by the French to describe the poorer members of the Third Estate, according to the dominant theory because they usually wore pantaloons instead of the fashionable knee-length culotte.-History:The term came to refer to the ill-clad and ill-equipped...
— poor labourers and radical Jacobins — rioted; counter-revolutionary activities began in some regions. This encouraged the Jacobins to seize power through a parliamentary
coupA coup d'état , or coup for short, is the sudden unconstitutional deposition of a legitimate government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another, either civil or military...
, backed up by force effected by mobilising public support against the Girondist faction, and by utilising the mob power of the Parisian
sans-culottes. An alliance of Jacobin and
sans-culottes elements thus became the effective centre of the new government. Policy became considerably more radical, as
"The Law of the Maximum"General Maximum or The Law of the Maximum was a law created during the course of the French Revolution as an extension of the Law of Suspects on 29 September 1793...
set food prices and led to executions of offenders. This policy of price control was coeval with the
Committee of Public SafetyThe Committee of Public Safety , set up by the National Convention in July 1793, formed the de facto executive government of France during the Reign of Terror , a stage of the French Revolution...
's rise to power and the
Reign of TerrorThe Reign of Terror , also known as the The Terror was a period of violence that occurred four years and two months after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of the...
. The Committee first attempted to set the price for only a limited number of grain products, but by September of 1793 it expanded the "maximum" to cover all foodstuffs and a long list of other goods. Widespread shortages and famine ensued. The Committee reacted by sending dragoons into the countryside to arrest farmers and seize crops. This temporarily solved the problem in Paris, but the rest of the country suffered. By the spring of 1794 forced collection of food was not sufficient to feed even Paris and the days of the Committee were numbered. When Robespierre went to the guillotine in July of that year the crowd jeered, "There goes the dirty maximum!"
Reign of Terror
The
Committee of Public SafetyThe Committee of Public Safety , set up by the National Convention in July 1793, formed the de facto executive government of France during the Reign of Terror , a stage of the French Revolution...
came under the control of
Maximilien RobespierreMaximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre is one of the best-known and most influential figures of the French Revolution...
, a lawyer, and the Jacobins unleashed the Reign of Terror (1793-1794). According to archival records, at least 16,594 people died under the
guillotineThe guillotine was a device used for carrying out executions by decapitation. It consists of a tall upright frame from which a blade is suspended. This blade is raised with a rope and then allowed to drop, severing the victim's head from their body...
or otherwise after accusations of counter-revolutionary activities. A number of historians note that as many as 40,000 accused prisoners may have been summarily executed without trial or died awaiting trial.
On 2 June 1793, Paris sections — encouraged by the
enragésLes Enragés were a radical group active during the French Revolution of 1789 opposed to the Jacobins. Initiated by Jacques Roux, Théophile Leclerc, Jean Varlet and others, they believed that liberty for all meant more than mere constitutional rights...
("enraged ones")
Jacques RouxJacques Roux was the radical leader of the Enragés faction during the French Revolution.-Career:He was one of the first priests to accept the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. His radicalism and his surname caused him to be called "the Red Priest". His demands on price and tax reglementation...
and
Jacques HébertJacques René Hébert was editor of the extreme radical newspaper Le Père Duchesne during the French Revolution...
— took over the Convention, calling for administrative and political purges, a low fixed price for
breadBread is a staple food prepared by cooking a dough of flour and water and possibly more ingredients. Doughs are usually baked in the Western world , but in some cuisines breads are steamed, fried, or baked on a hot skillet. It may be leavened or unleavened...
, and a limitation of the electoral
franchiseSuffrage is the civil right to vote, or the exercise of that right. It is also called political franchise or simply the franchise. Suffrage may apply to elections, but also extends to initiatives and referendums...
to "
sans-culottesSans-culottes was a term created 1790 - 1792 by the French to describe the poorer members of the Third Estate, according to the dominant theory because they usually wore pantaloons instead of the fashionable knee-length culotte.-History:The term came to refer to the ill-clad and ill-equipped...
" alone. With the backing of the
National GuardThe National Guard was the name given at the time of the French Revolution to the militias formed in each city, in imitation of the National Guard created in Paris. It was a military force separate from the regular army...
, they managed to convince the Convention to arrest 31 Girondin leaders, including
Jacques Pierre BrissotJacques Pierre Brissot , who assumed the name of de Warville, was a leading member of the Girondist movement during the French Revolution. Some sources give his name as Jean Pierre Brissot.-Biography:...
. Following these arrests, the Jacobins gained control of the Committee of Public Safety on 10 June, installing the
revolutionary dictatorship. On 13 July, the assassination of
Jean-Paul MaratJean-Paul Marat , was a Swiss-born physician, political theorist and scientist better known as a radical journalist and politician from the French Revolution. His journalism was renowned for its fiery character and uncompromising stance towards the new government, "enemies of the revolution" and...
— a Jacobin leader and journalist known for his bloodthirsty rhetoric — by
Charlotte CordayMarie-Anne Charlotte de Corday d'Armont , known to history as Charlotte Corday, was a figure of the French Revolution. In 1793, she was executed under the guillotine for the assassination of Jacobin leader Jean-Paul Marat, who was responsible for the Reign of Terror...
, a Girondin, resulted in further increase of Jacobin political influence.
Georges DantonGeorges Jacques Danton was a leading figure in the early stages of the French Revolution and the first President of the Committee of Public Safety. Danton's role in the onset of the Revolution has been disputed; many historians describe him as "the chief force in theoverthrow of the monarchy and...
, the leader of the
August 1792 uprisingOn 10 August 1792, during the French Revolution, a mob—with the backing of a new municipal government of Paris that came to be known as the "insurrectionary" Paris Commune—besieged the Tuileries palace. King Louis XVI and the royal family took shelter with the Legislative Assembly. This proved to...
against the
KingLouis XVI of France ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1774 until 1791, and then as King of the French from 1791 to 1792. Suspended and arrested during the Insurrection of 10 August 1792, he was tried by the National Convention, found guilty of treason, and executed by guillotine on 21...
, undermined by several political reversals, was removed from the Committee and Robespierre, "the Incorruptible", became its most influential member as it moved to take radical measures against the Revolution's domestic and foreign enemies.
Meanwhile, on 24 June, the Convention adopted the first republican constitution of France, variously referred to as the
French Constitution of 1793The Constitution of 24 June 1793 , also known as the The Montagnard Constitution , was the constitution which instated the First Republic during the French Revolution. Following a referendum, it was ratified by the National Convention on June 24, 1793...
or Constitution of the Year I. It was progressive and radical in several respects, in particular by establishing
universal male suffrageUniversal suffrage consists of the extension of the right to vote to adult citizens as a whole, though it may also mean extending said right to minors and noncitizens...
. It was ratified by public
referendumA referendum , ballot question, or plebiscite is a direct vote in which an entire electorate is asked to either accept or reject a particular proposal...
, but never applied, because normal legal processes were suspended before it could take effect.
In
VendéeThe Vendée is a department in the Pays-de-la-Loire region in west central France, on the Atlantic Ocean. The name Vendée is taken from the Vendée river which runs through the south-eastern part of the department.- History :...
, peasants revolted against the French Revolutionary government in 1793. They resented the changes imposed on the
Roman Catholic ChurchThe Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church. With more than a billion members, over half of all Christians and more than one-sixth of the world's population, the Catholic Church is a communion of the Western, or Latin Rite Church, and...
by the
Civil Constitution of the ClergyThe Civil Constitution of the Clergy was a law passed on 12 July 1790 during the French Revolution, that subordinated the Roman Catholic Church in France to the French government....
(1790) and broke into open revolt in defiance of the Revolutionary government's military
conscriptionConscription is a general term for involuntary labor demanded by an established authority. It is most often used in the specific sense of requiring citizens to serve in the armed forces...
. This became a
guerrilla warGuerrilla warfare is the irregular warfare warfare and combat in which a small group of combatants use mobile military tactics in the form of ambushes and raids to combat a larger and less mobile formal army....
, known as the War in the Vendée. North of the
LoireThe Loire is the longest river in France. With a length of , it drains an area of , which represents more than a fifth of France's land area...
, similar revolts were started by the so-called Chouans (royalist rebels).
After the defeat at
SavenaySavenay is a commune in the Loire-Atlantique department in western France.The Battle of Savenay on 23 December 1793 was the last, decisive battle of the Revolt in the Vendée during the French Revolution. In this battle the forces of the royalist counter-revolutionaries were irrevocably shattered....
, when regular warfare in the Vendée was at an end, the French general
Francois Joseph WestermannFrançois Joseph Westermann was a French general of the Revolutionary Wars and political figure of the French Revolution.-Career:...
penned a letter to the Committee of Public Safety stating
“There is no more Vendée. It died with its wives and its children by our free sabres. I have just buried it in the woods and the swamps of Savenay. According to the orders that you gave me, I crushed the children under the feet of the horses, massacred the women who, at least for these, will not give birth to any more brigands. I do not have a prisoner to reproach me. I have exterminated all. The roads are sown with corpses. At Savenay, brigands are arriving all the time claiming to surrender, and we are shooting them non-stop... Mercy is not a revolutionary sentiment."
However, some historians doubt the existence of this document and others point out that the claims in it were patently false - there were in fact thousands of (living) Vendean prisoners, the revolt had been far from crushed, and the Convention had explicitly decreed that women, children and unarmed men were to be treated humanely. It has been hypothesized that if the letter is authentic, that may have been Westermann's attempt to exaggerate the intensity of his actions and his success, because he was eager to avoid being purged for his incompetent military leadership and for his opposition to sans-culotte generals (he failed to avoid that, since he was guillotined together with
DantonDanton may refer to:Films* Danton , German film by Dimitri Buchowetzki* Danton , German film by Hans Behrendt* Danton , French film by André Roubaud...
's group).
The revolt and its suppression (including both combat casualties and massacres and executions on both sides) are thought to have taken between 117 000 and 250 000 lives (170 000 according to the latest estimates). Because of the extremely brutal forms that the Republican repression took in many places, certain historians such as Reynald Secher have called the event a "
genocideGenocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.While precise definition varies among genocide scholars, a legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of...
". This description has become popular in the
mass mediaMass media denotes a section of the media specifically designed to reach a very large audience such as the population of a nation state. The term was coined in the 1920s with the advent of nationwide radio networks, mass-circulation newspapers and magazines. However, some forms of mass media such...
, but it has attracted much criticism in academia as being unrealistic and biased.
Facing local revolts and foreign invasions in both the East and West of the country, the most urgent government business was the war. On 17 August, the Convention voted for general
conscriptionConscription is a general term for involuntary labor demanded by an established authority. It is most often used in the specific sense of requiring citizens to serve in the armed forces...
, the
levée en masseLevée en masse is defined in Article 4, letter A paragraph 6 of the Third Geneva Convention. It is a French term for mass conscription during the French Revolutionary Wars, particularly for the one from 23 August 1793.- Terminology :...
, which mobilized all citizens to serve as soldiers or suppliers in the war effort.
The result was a policy through which the state used violent repression to crush resistance to the government. Under control of the effectively dictatorial Committee, the Convention quickly enacted more legislation. On 9 September, the Convention established sans-culottes
paramilitary forces, the revolutionary armies
, to force farmers to surrender grainGRAIN is an international non-governmental organization based in Barcelona, Spain, which works toward sustainable agriculture. It was formed upon the realization that the genetic diversity of the world's food crops are being drastically eliminated...
demanded by the government. On 17 September, the Law of SuspectsThe Law of Suspects is a term which is used to refer to an enactment passed on September 17 1793 during the course of the French Revolution. It allowed for the creation of revolutionary tribunals to try those who were suspected of treason against the Republic and to punish those convicted with death...
was passed, which authorized the charging of counter-revolutionaries with vaguely defined crimes against liberty. On 29 September, the Convention extended price-fixing from grain and bread to other household goods and declared the right to set a limit on wages.
The
guillotineThe guillotine was a device used for carrying out executions by decapitation. It consists of a tall upright frame from which a blade is suspended. This blade is raised with a rope and then allowed to drop, severing the victim's head from their body...
became the symbol of a string of executions. Louis XVI had already been guillotined before the start of the terror; Queen Marie Antoinette, the Girondins, Philippe Égalité (despite his vote for the death of the King),
Madame RolandMarie-Jeanne Roland de la Platière, better known simply as Madame Roland and born Marie-Jeanne Phlipon , was, together with her husband Jean-Marie Roland de la Platière, a supporter of the French Revolution and influential member of the Girondist faction...
and many others were executed by guillotine. The
Revolutionary TribunalThe Revolutionary Tribunal was a court which was instituted in Paris by the Convention during the French Revolution for the trial of political offenders, and eventually became one of the most powerful engines of the Reign of Terror....
summarily condemned thousands of people to death by the guillotine, while mobs beat other victims to death.
At the peak of the terror, the slightest hint of counter-revolutionary thoughts or activities (or, as in the case of
Jacques HébertJacques René Hébert was editor of the extreme radical newspaper Le Père Duchesne during the French Revolution...
, revolutionary zeal exceeding that of those in power) could place one under suspicion, and trials did not always proceed according to contemporary standards of
due processDue process alternatively due process of law or the process that is due, is the principle that the government must respect all of the legal rights that are owed to a person according to the law...
. Sometimes people died for their political opinions or actions, but many for little reason beyond mere suspicion, or because some others had a stake in getting rid of them. Most of the victims received an unceremonious trip to the guillotine in an open wooden cart (the tumbrel). In the rebellious provinces, the government representatives had unlimited authority and some engaged in extreme repressions and abuses. For example,
Jean-Baptiste CarrierJean-Baptiste Carrier was a French Revolutionary, known for his cruelty to his enemies, especially to clergy.-Biography:...
became notorious for the
NoyadesNoyades were drownings superintended during the Reign of Terror at Nantes, France by the attorney Carrier, the representative-on-mission.The drownings were carried out by cramming some 90 priests in a flat-bottomed craft under hatches, and drowning them in mid-stream after scuttling the boat at a...
["drownings"] - he organized in
NantesNantes is a city in western France, located on the Loire River, from the Atlantic coast. The city is the sixth largest in France, while its metropolitan area is the eighth with 804,833 inhabitants at a 2008 estimate....
; his conduct was judged unacceptable even by the Jacobin government and he was recalled.
Another
anti-clericalAnti-clericalism is a historical movement that opposes religious institutional power and influence, real or alleged, in all aspects of public and political life, and the involvement of religion in the everyday life of the citizen...
uprising was made possible by the installment of the
Republican CalendarThe French Republican Calendar or French Revolutionary Calendar was a calendar proposed during the French Revolution, and used by the French government for about 12 years from late 1793 to 1805, and for 18 days in 1871 in Paris.-History:...
on 24 October 1793. Against Robespierre's concepts of
DeismDeism or is a religious and philosophical belief that a supreme being created the universe, and that this can be determined using reason and observation of the natural world alone, without a need for either faith or organized religion...
and
VirtueVirtue is moral excellence. A virtue is a character trait or quality valued as being good.Personal virtues are characteristics valued as promoting individual and collective well-being, and thus good by definition. The opposite of virtue is vice.-Virtues and values:Virtues can be placed into a...
, Hébert's (and Chaumette's)
atheistAtheism can be either the rejection of theism,or the position that deities do not exist.In the broadest sense, it is the absence of belief in the existence of deities....
movement initiated a religious campaign to
dechristianizeChristianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented by the revelations in the New Testament....
society. The climax was reached with the celebration of the flame of Reason in
Notre DameNotre Dame de Paris is a Gothic, Roman Catholic Cathedral on the eastern half of the Île de la Cité in the fourth arrondissement of Paris, France. It is the cathedral of the Catholic archdiocese of Paris: that is, it is the church that contains the "cathedra", or official chair, of the Archbishop...
Cathedral on 10 November.
The Reign of Terror enabled the revolutionary government to avoid military defeat. The Jacobins expanded the size of the army, and
CarnotLazare Nicolas Marguerite, Comte Carnot , the Organizer of Victory in the French Revolutionary Wars, was a French politician, engineer, and mathematician.-Education and early life:...
replaced many aristocratic officers with younger soldiers who had demonstrated their ability and patriotism. The Republican army was able to throw back the
AustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.3 million people in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west...
ns,
PrussiaPrussia was a historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries this state had substantial influence on German and European history...
ns,
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
, and Spanish. At the end of 1793, the army began to prevail and revolts were defeated with ease. The
Ventôse DecreesThe Ventôse Decrees were decrees proposed on February 26 and March 3, 1794 by the French revolutionary leader Louis de Saint-Just. Saint-Just proposed to confiscate the property of exiles and opponents of the Revolution, and redistribute it to the needy...
(February–March 1794) proposed the confiscation of the goods of exiles and opponents of the Revolution, and their redistribution to the needy.
In the spring of 1794, both extremist enragés
such as Hébert and moderate MontagnardThe Mountain refers in the context of the history of the French Revolution to a political group, whose members, called Montagnards, sat on the highest benches in the Assembly...
indulgents
such as Danton were charged with counter-revolutionary activities, tried and guillotined. On 7 June Robespierre, who had previously condemned the Cult of ReasonThe Cult of Reason was a creed based on atheism devised during the French Revolution by Jacques Hébert, Pierre Gaspard Chaumette and their supporters. It was stopped by Maximilien Robespierre, a Deist, who instituted the Cult of the Supreme Being...
, advocated a new state religion and recommended the Convention acknowledge the existence of the "Supreme Being".
Thermidorian Reaction
On 27 July 1794, the
Thermidorian ReactionThe Thermidorian Reaction was a revolt in the French Revolution against the excesses of the Reign of Terror. It was triggered by a vote of the Committee of Public Safety to execute Robespierre, Saint-Just and several other leading members of the Terror...
led to the arrest and execution of Robespierre and
Louis de Saint-JustLouis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just , usually known as Saint-Just, was a French revolutionary and military leader...
. The new government was predominantly made up of Girondists who had survived the Terror, and after taking power, they took revenge as well by persecuting even those Jacobins who had helped to overthrow Robespierre, banning the Jacobin Club, and executing many of its former members in what was known as the
White TerrorIn general, the term White Terror refers to acts of violence carried out by reactionary groups as part of a counter-revolution...
.
In the wake of excesses of the Terror, the Convention approved the new "Constitution of the Year III" on 22 August 1795. A French plebiscite ratified the document, with about 1,057,000 votes for the constitution and 49,000 against. The results of the voting were announced on 23 September 1795, and the new constitution took effect on 27 September 1795.
The Directory (1795–1799)
The new constitution created the Directoire
and the first bicameral legislature in French history. The parliament consisted of 500 representatives — the Conseil des Cinq-Cents
(Council of the Five Hundred) — and 250 senators — the Conseil des Anciens
(Council of Elders). Executive power went to five "directors," named annually by the Conseil des Anciens
from a list submitted by the Conseil des Cinq-Cents. Furthermore, the
universal suffrageUniversal suffrage consists of the extension of the right to vote to adult citizens as a whole, though it may also mean extending said right to minors and noncitizens...
of 1793 was replaced by limited suffrage based on property.
With the establishment of the Directory, contemporary observers might have assumed that the Revolution was finished. Citizens of the war-weary nation wanted stability, peace, and an end to conditions that at times bordered on chaos. Those who wished to restore the monarchy and the
Ancien RégimeAncien Régime refers primarily to the aristocratic, social, and political system established in France under the Valois and Bourbon dynasties...
by putting
Louis XVIIILouis XVIII , Louis Stanislas Xavier de France, was King of France and Navarre from 1814 to 1824, omitting the Hundred Days in 1815. Louis XVIII spent twenty-three years in exile, from 1791 to 1814, due to the French Revolution, and was exiled again in 1815, upon the return of Napoleon Bonaparte...
on the throne, and those who would have renewed the Reign of Terror were insignificant in number. The possibility of foreign interference had vanished with the failure of the
First CoalitionThe First Coalition was the first major concerted effort of multiple European powers to contain Revolutionary France. It took shape after the French Revolutionary Wars had already begun....
. The earlier atrocities had made confidence or goodwill between parties impossible. The same instinct of self-preservation which had led the members of the Convention to claim so large a part in the new legislature and the whole of the Directory impelled them to keep their predominance.
As many French citizens distrusted the Directory, the directors could achieve their purposes only by extraordinary means. They habitually disregarded the terms of the constitution, and, even when the elections that they rigged went against them, the directors routinely used draconian police measures to quell dissent. Moreover, the Directory used
warWar is a reciprocated, armed conflict, between two or more non-congruous entities, aimed at reorganising a subjectively designed, geo-politically desired result...
as the best expedient for prolonging their power, and the directors were thus driven to rely on the armies, which also desired war and grew less and less civic-minded.
Other reasons influenced them in this direction. State finances during the earlier phases of the Revolution had been so thoroughly ruined that the government could not have met its expenses without the plunder and the tribute of foreign countries. If peace were made, the armies would return home and the directors would have to face the exasperation of the rank-and-file who had lost their livelihood, as well as the ambition of generals who could, in a moment, brush them aside.
BarrasPaul François Jean Nicolas, vicomte de Barras was a French politician of the French Revolution, and the main executive leader of the Directory regime of 1795 - 1799.-Early life:...
and
RewbellJean-François Rewbell was a French lawyer, diplomat, and politician of the Revolution.-The revolutionary:...
were notoriously corrupt themselves and screened corruption in others. The patronage of the directors was ill-bestowed, and the general maladministration heightened their unpopularity.
The constitutional party in the legislature desired
tolerationToleration and tolerance are terms used in social, cultural and religious contexts to describe attitudes which are "tolerant" of practices or group memberships that may be disapproved of by those in the majority. In practice, "tolerance" indicates support for practices that prohibit ethnic and...
of the nonjuring clergy, the repeal of the laws against the relatives of the
émigréÉmigré is a French term that literally refers to a person who has "migrated out," but often carries a connotation of politico-social self-exile....
s, and some merciful discrimination toward the émigrés themselves. The directors baffled all such endeavours. On the other hand, the
socialistSocialism refers to various theories of economic organization advocating public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources, and a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals with a method of compensation based on...
conspiracy of
BabeufFrançois-Noël Babeuf , known as Gracchus Babeuf , was a French political agitator and journalist of the Revolutionary period...
was easily quelled. Little was done to improve the finances, and the
assignatAssignats were paper money issued by the National Constituent Assembly in France during the French Revolution. The assignats were issued after the confiscation of church properties in 1790 because the government was bankrupt. The government thought that the financial problems could be solved by...
s continued to fall in value.
The new
régimeThe word regime refers to a set of conditions, most often of a political nature. It may also be used synonymously with "regimen", for example in the phrases "exercise regime" or "medical regime".-Politics:In politics, a regime is the form of government: the set of rules, cultural or social norms,...
met opposition from remaining Jacobins and the royalists. The army suppressed riots and counter-revolutionary activities. In this way the army and its successful general,
Napoleon BonaparteNapoleon Bonaparte later known as Napoleon I, and previously Napoleone di Buonaparte, was a military and political leader of France whose actions shaped European politics in the early 19th century.Born in Corsica and trained as an artillery officer in mainland France, Bonaparte rose to prominence...
eventually gained much power.
On 9 November 1799 (18 Brumaire of the Year VIII)
Napoleon BonaparteNapoleon Bonaparte later known as Napoleon I, and previously Napoleone di Buonaparte, was a military and political leader of France whose actions shaped European politics in the early 19th century.Born in Corsica and trained as an artillery officer in mainland France, Bonaparte rose to prominence...
staged the
coup of 18 BrumaireThe coup of 18 Brumaire was the coup d'état by which General Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the French Directory, replacing it with the French Consulate...
which installed the ConsulateThe Consulate was the government of France between the fall of the Directory in the coup of 18 Brumaire in 1799 until the start of the Napoleonic Empire in 1804...
. This effectively led to Bonaparte's dictatorship and eventually (in 1804) to his proclamation as Empereur (emperor), which brought to a close the specifically
republicA republic is a form of government in which the head of state is not a monarch and the people have an impact on its government. The word 'republic' is derived from the Latin phrase res publica which can be translated as "a public affair".Both modern and ancient republics vary widely in their...
an phase of the French Revolution.
Historical analysis
The constitutional assembly failed for many reasons: there were too many monarchists to have a republic and too many republicans to have a monarch; too many people opposed the King (especially after the flight to Varennes), which meant that the people who supported the King had their reputation slashed; the
Civil Constitution of the ClergyThe Civil Constitution of the Clergy was a law passed on 12 July 1790 during the French Revolution, that subordinated the Roman Catholic Church in France to the French government....
; and many more.
Historians disagree about the political and socioeconomic nature of the Revolution. Traditional Marxist interpretations, such as that presented by
Georges LefebvreGeorges Lefebvre was a French historian, best known for his work on the French Revolution and peasant life. He coined the term "history from below", which was later popularised by the British Marxist Historians...
, described the revolution as the result of the clash between a
feudalisticFeudalism is a decentralized sociopolitical structure in which a weak monarchy attempts to control the lands of the realm through reciprocal agreements with regional leaders...
noble class and the
capitalistCapitalism is an economic and social system in which the means of production are privately controlled; labor, goods and capital are traded in a market; profits are distributed to owners or invested in technologies and industries; and wages are paid to labor...
bourgeoisHistorically, the bourgeoisie were a social class of people, characterized by their ownership of capital and the related culture. They were a part of the middle or merchant classes of European feudalism, where their power came from employment, education, and wealth, as distinguished from those...
class. Some historians argue that the old aristocratic order of the
Ancien RégimeAncien Régime refers primarily to the aristocratic, social, and political system established in France under the Valois and Bourbon dynasties...
succumbed to an alliance of the rising
bourgeoisieHistorically, the bourgeoisie were a social class of people, characterized by their ownership of capital and the related culture. They were a part of the middle or merchant classes of European feudalism, where their power came from employment, education, and wealth, as distinguished from those...
, aggrieved peasants, and urban wage-earners.
Yet another interpretation asserts that the revolution resulted when various
aristocraticThe aristocracy are people considered to be in the highest social class in society, who traditionally have land, money, and power. They are often members of a hereditary nobility that derives its stature from a lineage traceable to the original inhabitants or rulers of a region...
and bourgeois reform movements spun out of control. According to this model, these movements coincided with popular movements of the new wage-earning classes and the provincial peasantry, but any alliance between classes was contingent and incidental.
A contributing factor to the Revolution was the considerable increases in poverty in the preceding years. Some scholars trace this to several years of recurrent weather aberrations, caused by the
LakiŁąki may refer to the following places in Poland:*Łąki, Lower Silesian Voivodeship *Łąki, West Pomeranian Voivodeship *Łąki, Lublin Voivodeship...
eruption of 1783 and the severe El Niño effects that were to follow.
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Other revolutions or rebellions in French history
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Rebellion, French Huguenots (1710-1715)
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The Haitian Revolution is, as historian C.L.R. James affirms, "the only successful slave revolt in history." It established Haiti as the first republic ruled by blacks. At the time of the revolution, Haiti was known as Saint-Domingue and was a colony of France...
, Haiti colony (1791–1804)
- July Revolution
The French Revolution of 1830, also known as the July Revolution, saw the overthrow of King
Charles X of France, the French
Bourbon monarch, and the ascent of his cousin
Louis-Philippe, the
Duc d'Orléans,...
(1830)
- French Revolution of 1848
- Paris Commune
The Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris, from March 28 to May 28, 1871. It existed before the split between anarchists and socialists had taken place, and it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class...
of 1871
- French Army Mutinies (1917)
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- May 1968 in France, a noteworthy rebellion, though not quite a revolution
Historical era
External links
- Open University course
- Entry on Encyclopedia.com from the Columbia Encyclopedia
- Primary source documents from The Internet Modern History Sourcebook
- Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution, a collaborative site by the Center for History and New Media (George Mason University) and the American Social History Project (City University of New York)
- The Origins of the French Revolution, The French Revolution: The Moderate Stage, 1789-1792, and The French Revolution: The Radical Stage, 1792-1794, three essays from The History Guide: Lectures on Modern European Intellectual History
- Vancea, S. The Cahiers de Doleances of 1789, Clio History Journal, 2008.