The French Revolution ranks with the Reformation as a pivotal event in European history. The French Revolution marked the end of the period of absolute monarchy and the beginnings of democratic stirrings in Europe. Unfortunately, the Revolution also ranks as one of the bloodiest events in European history. Hundreds of thousands died in the Revolution itself and in the wars it unleashed on the European continent. France started some of the wars in efforts to export the Revolution; others were begun by the monarchies surrounding the country in attempts to contain and reverse the Revolution. Napoleon would emerge from the Revolution as the foremost military leader of Europe; his attempts to conquer the continent would lead to misery, death, and destruction for over a decade.

Causes:

1. French economic crisis that began with Louis XIV’s wars. By the time of Louis XVI, most of France’s budget was consumed by the national debt. The French aristocracy and Church officials were exempt from taxation. Church lands — at least 10% of France’s best land — were also exempt from taxation.
2. American Revolution:
   1. Louis XVI financed the Revolution as an excuse to weaken Great Britain. Too bad the Americans were broke at the end of the Revolution and couldn’t repay the debt.
   2. American ideals of democracy intoxicated Europe. Remember, the Americans were heavily influenced by the Enlightenment to break from Britain and create a republic.
3. The Enlightenment ideals of equality attacked the privileges of the aristocracy.
4. The growing middle class — the burgeoisie — resented the inability of social promotion into the aristocracy in spite of their wealth.
5. Widespread unemployment provided lots of manpower for a revolution.

By 1787, France was bankrupt. Louis had tried to enact taxation of the aristocracy but continually met with failure. In November 1787, Louis announced elections for the Estates-General, the assembly that hadn’t met since 1614.

Three Estates:
1. Clergy: less than 2% of the population
2. Aristocracy: less than 1% of the population
3. Everyone else: roughly 97% of the population

The first question of the Estates-General concerned the number of delegates assigned to each Estate; should the Third Estate have more delegates since it represented more people? Or should each Estate have the same number of representatives? Louis agreed that the Third Estate should have twice the number of delegates as the First and Second Estates each would have.

Question 2: Should the 3 Estates meet separately or together? If the Estates met together, the Third Estate could easily dominate the proceedings unless the First and Second Estates maintained absolute solidarity.

In statements leading up to the meeting of the Estates-General, calls rang out for a constitutional monarchy with a parliament controlling taxation and legislation. The clerical Estate wanted control of the education system and no toleration for Protestantism.

When the Estates-General met in Versailles, the deputies of the Third Estate rejected separate meetings and encouraged the other deputies to join them in reforming the government. Nine priests did so. When the royalists locked the Assembly out of their meeting hall, the deputies of the Third Estate and the defecting priests joined together to take an oath on the king’s tennis court that they would not disband until France had a constitution. The group called themselves the French National Assembly, and the oath came to be known as the Tennis Court Oath. 612 of 621 Third Estate deputies were joined by 149 priests and a few aristocrats in taking the oath.

Louis tried to disband the Third Estate, but the deputies refused to leave. Louis couldn’t rely on the military to disband the rebels because most of the troops at Versailles were French and wouldn’t fire on the deputies. Louis called in his foreign mercenaries, but events ballooned out of control before they could arrive.

Bastille Day: July 14, 1789: Louis had fired Jacques Necker, his minister of finance and a popular figure with the French people. Paris erupted in chaos; crowds stormed the Bastille, the royal prison in Paris. From Jerry Pournelle’s site:

There were precisely 7 prisoners "liberated" in the storming of the Bastille, all aristocrats because only aristocrats were kept there: it was more like a luxury hotel than a jail.

There were four forgers, two madmen, and a young man who had challenged the best swordsman in Paris to a duel; his father had him locked up to keep him from being killed. The forgers were there to escape being sent to the ordinary prisons, and the madmen were there because their families were influential enough to get them confined there instead of to one of the asylums which were literally snake pits.

The garrison of the Bastille were invalided or elderly soldiers who were there as a retirement: the place was the Old Soldiers Home. They were butchered to a man by those who liberated the Bastille. The forgers vanished. The madmen ended up in snake pits. The seventh young man became a revolutionary and was eventually executed by Robespierre for insufficient zeal. 
But it was a symbolic blow against oppression and it's the official birthday of the Republic of France. (Source: “Chaos Manor in Perspective,” http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives/archivesview/view57.html, last accessed 3 October 2005)

Peasants armed themselves across France and stormed the chateaux of their feudal lords, the aristocrats. Peasants burned land records and property; aristocrats in the affected areas were forced to renounce their feudal privileges. 4 August 1989: the aristocracy proposed to the National Assembly that all feudal rights be revoked. The Assembly revoked feudal servitude and taxes, feudal rights, manorial courts of justice, tithes to the Catholic Church and the sale of public offices.

5 October 1789: after a bread riot and march to Versailles by unemployed Parisians (remember unemployment?), Louis agreed to leave Versailles and return to Paris to his palace there (the Tuileries Palace). The Assembly also moved to Paris.

The Assembly’s move to Paris marked the beginning of political clubs that soon spilled over into the Assembly itself. Major Clubs:

1. Cordeliers, led by Jean-Paul Marat, a physician and radical newspaper writer
2. Jacobins, who included Lafayette (of American Revolution fame) and Robespierre (later of the Reign of Terror fame)

The Jacobins soon gained the upper hand in the Assembly, and Robespierre came to control the Jacobins.

November 1789: Bishop Charles Talleyrand convinced the Assembly to nationalize all Church lands in France. (What kind of bishop was he?) With the loss of lands and tithes, the Church could no longer afford to pay its priests. In July 1790, all priests were forced to become state employees, while the office of bishop was converted into a publicly-elected position. Clergy had to swear loyalty to the constitution being developed; 95% of bishops and 40% of priests refused. The Assembly later abolished monasteries and most religious orders.

The Assembly abolished internal tariffs, nationalized all royal land, created a land tax, and prepared a simpler system of weights and measures (the metric system). Robespierre convinced the Assembly to grant civil equality to Protestants and ex-slaves.

June 1791: Louis XVI, at the behest of his queen, Marie Antoinette, took his family and tried to flee France. He was recognized by a postmaster, arrested, and returned to Paris. Many deputies discussed abolishing the monarchy in favor of a republic.

September 1791: Assembly produced the first written constitution in France. Louis XVI was retained as a constitutional monarch, but power resided in a unicameral legislature.

Meanwhile, thousands of French nobility and clergy had fled France, eventually totaling nearly 3% of the population. Interestingly, the largest number of emigres were from the Third Estate. The emigres focused their efforts on combating the Assembly within France and encouraging foreign opposition to reforms outside of France.

Brunswick Manifesto: Marie Antoinette, was the sister of Austrian king and Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II. While Leopold refused to give direct aid to Marie and Louis, their arrest prodded him into circulating a letter to the monarchs of Europe asking for aid for the French royal family. Given France’s propensity to war over the past centuries, Leopold found few takers. Only Frederick William II of Prussia consented, and the two monarchs issued the Brunswick Manifesto in 1792. Leopold died in March, and his son Francis I succeeded him. Francis was as hot-tempered as Leopold was cautious. The radicals in Paris were itching for war and invaded Austrian lands, precipitating a war with Austria and Prussia in 1792.

The war soon spread as the monarchies of Europe awoke to the dangers of the Revolution. Britain, Spain, and Russia joined Austria and Prussia. France responded by recruiting the unemployed (remember the unemployed from earlier in the lecture?) and later by enforcing universal conscription. By the end of the war, France had roughly 1 million soldiers — the largest army Europe had seen. Problems: you can’t train that many soldiers quickly, and moving lots of men in pre-computer Europe was a massive task. On the other hand, France’s army was so large that the nation was able to withstand the combined attacks of the 5 nations. France occupied the lowlands (now Belgium), the German Rhineland, and northern Italy.

August 10, 1792: in the face of the war, Parisians revolted. The Assembly responded by creating a new legislature, declaring France a republic, and enacting universal suffrage to a new constitutional assembly. The Assembly moved Louis XVI to a royal prison and disbanded.

September Massacres: mobs killed over 1,100 inmates in Paris while other killings affected the nation in other areas.

The new assembly was elected later in September 1792: 749 new deputies, most under age 44, and dominated by the Jacobins and their allies. The Convention abolished the monarchy, declared a republic, and put Louis on trial for treason. Marie had been feeding vital information to the monarchies. Louis was convicted and sentenced to death. He was guillotined in January 1793.

The Convention faced civil war by 1793, fueled by bread shortages and the government’s continued anti-Church activities. France lost Haiti when Toussaint L’Ouverture overthrew the French colonial regime. Robespierre responded to the civil war and external wars with the Reign of Terror, June 1793 to July 1794. Nearly 17,000 French citizens were executed, mostly workers and peasants but also Marie Antoinette. Over 200,000 French died in the civil war in this period. Robespierre executed even old friends.

July 1794: Robespierre was arrested in the Termidorian reaction and guillotined himself. The Convention abolished the Jacobin clubs, reduced the powers of the central government, and offered amnesty to rebels in the civil war. Religious freedom was restored and churches were separated from state control. The new constitution the Convention produced codified the reforms.

The new legislature by the constitution was bicameral: a lower house to introduce legislation, and an upper house — the House of Ancients, whose 250 members had to be at least 40 years old — with the power to block it. The constitution also provided for a 5-member Directory to govern the country as an executive branch. The Directors were chosen from within the legislature and prevented from succeeding themselves.

Talleyrand returned from exile and became foreign minister in 1797. The Directory attempted to strike a balance between the royalists who wanted the return of the royal family and the republicans who didn’t. The Directory proved unstable and was overthrown in a coup d’etat in 1799 — by Napoleon Bonaparte.