Chapter Summary

The French Revolution was an exciting and creative experiment in forms of government, political rights and social theories. The abolition of the absolute monarchy placed France on untested constitutional social grounds. The break with the past was chaotic and violent. Constitutional reform was accompanied by bloodshed and repression.

France under Louis XV was in a constant state of financial crisis. The crisis was made worse by the huge debts contracted to finance the Seven Years’ War. France’s defeat left it financially exhausted and with a huge debt. The financial crisis increased tensions between the king and the aristocracy, particularly in the parlements, the courts of the French judicial system. Magistrates within the parlements began to refuse to publish royal decrees in an effort to hamstring the royal government. Louis XVI was heir to a divided kingdom deeply in debt. The new king made the situation worse by committing France to yet another costly war, the American Revolution. In desperation, Louis XVI agreed to call the Estates General in 1789 to deal with the fiscal crisis. The Estates General represented the three orders or estates of French Society—the clergy, the nobility and the commoners.

The announcement of the elections set off rounds of political debate in all estates and classes. The Estates General provided a national forum for expressing public unhappiness to the government. The nobles were determined to preserve their social and economic status and increase their political role. The Third Estate used the public forum as a means of demanding a greater voice than that traditionally allotted to them. To regularize the registration of grievances, notebooks—cahiers de doléances—were carried by elected representatives to the Estates General. These collections of political dissatisfaction with the royal administration demonstrated the universality of unhappiness and the existence of a common political culture. The people of France, of all classes, were demanding a greater role in government.

The Estates General met in May, 1789. The representatives of the estates were separated in manner of dress and in location relative to the king. None of the estates could agree on the demands of the Third Estate for votes to be counted for each representative, rather than for each estate—a method that would swing the balance of power to the Third Estate. Under the influence of Abbe Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes, the Third Estate decided to meet apart from the other estates. Taking the name of the National Assembly and attracting reformers from the nobility and the clergy, the Third Estate met in a tennis court and proposed to construct a new French constitution. As the members of the Third Estate deliberated a new government for France, all the country awaited the results. Public frustration over the political stalemate and worsening economic conditions began to spark riots.

Louis XVI refused to accept the existence of the National Assembly as a constitutional body. The king began to marshal troops at Versailles to enforce his will. In response, the citizens of Paris stormed the royal armory, a prison in Paris called the Bastille. The Parisian citizens took to arms and formed a citizen militia, the National Guard, in support of the National Assembly. Other cities and towns in France followed the lead of the Parisians, and national guards appeared throughout the country.

The peasantry, who continued to bear the brunt of taxation, regarded the creation of the National Guard in Paris and elsewhere as part of an aristocratic plot to frustrate reform. Desperate because of the disastrous condition of the agricultural economy, peasants began to revolt against the authority of the local aristocracy. When news of rural violence against aristocratic privilege reached the National Assembly, the representatives acted to restore order. Noble privilege was abolished, but peasants were expected to pay to escape from feudal labor services.

Women were active participants in all parts of the early stages of revolution. On 5 October 1789 a mob of Parisian women marched to Versailles to protest the soaring prices of food. Armed with pikes, the women routed the king’s royal guards and killed several of them. Louis XVI was forced to return to Paris with the mob—a king taken prisoner by revolutionary women.

In late August of 1789 the national assembly issue Declaration of the Rights of Men and Citizen which enshrined the basic rights that all Frenchmen were entitled. The constitution of 1791 was the result of Enlightenment belief in the progress of mankind, but it was not democratic. Rights in property were retained, and only those who held property could vote. Those who controlled wealth were enshrined as the political elite in the 1791 constitution. In keeping with its enlightened philosophy, the new government abolished noble titles and guaranteed freedom of religion. For the length of the revolution, the French government even supported black liberation movements in the Caribbean and outlawed slavery. Women’s rights were less well guarded, despite their seminal role in the revolution.

The National Assembly began the reconstruction of the French government by dividing the country into new administrative districts, départements. The first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille was converted into a national celebration of the revolution. The Roman Catholic Church also came under attack. All monasteries were dissolved, and priests became salaried employees of the state. Catholic clergy unwilling to take an oath to the National Assembly were driven into hiding. The assault on the Church created a meaningful counter-revolutionary movement among the aristocrats-in-exile, the émigrés. Finally, in 1791 the National Assembly issued a new constitution establishing a limited monarchy. Louis XVI, with little choice, accepted the new constitution. Within months, the king and his family attempted to flee the kingdom and join the counterrevolution. Captured by forces of the National Guard, the king was returned to Paris as a prisoner of the state. Other problems faced the new constitutional monarchy. By accepting the debts of the Old Regime, the new government began its existence hopelessly in arrears. To pay for its expenditures, the Assembly issued assignats, treasury bonds of dubious worth. Inflation ravaged the already depressed economy. Disgusted with the government’s inability to control prices, peasants rioted throughout France. In the midst of economic disaster, the government declared war in 1792 on Austria.

As democracy began to replace monarchy in the French Revolution. It produced a new political universe populated by equal citizens instead of subjects of the king. All men, regardless of rank, were expected to participate in revolutionary politics. However, they were not experienced in the problems of exercising power.

In 1792 the working classes of the cities radicalized the process of revolution. Craftsmen, called sans-culottes, took the movement toward democracy into their own hands. On 10 August 1792, the sans-culottes of Paris stormed the royal palace of the Tuileries.

The national Convention became fragmented into partisan political factions. The most radical members of the Convention—those who supported the movement of the sans-culottes—were Jacobins. The Girondins were a more moderate faction who supported the French war effort. As the Girondins were unable to control the mounting violence in the countryside and in the cities, the Jacobins were able to gain an advantage. In June 1793, a mob surrounded the Convention and effectively captured the Girondist members. The leader of the Jacobins was Maximilien Robespierre. He became head of the radical Committee of Public Safety, a twelve-man tribunal created to restore order in France. Robespierre and his allies began systematically to remove political rivals through mass executions—the so-called Reign of Terror. Every departement possessed its own guillotine for revolutionary justice. Even religion was democratized. Christianity was replaced by the cult of the supreme being, a religion of reason in a search for a new moral climate. As in the earlier stages of revolution, women were conspicuously absent from power. Women were deemed fit for domestic duties but not for political action. Eventually Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety eliminated not only all rivals, but also all supporters. Without widespread public support, Robespierre fell in 1794 to the revolutionary justice he had established. With his execution, the Reign of Terror came to an end. The excesses of radical revolution cast both democracy and the sans-culottes into disfavor. Leadership in the revolution passed to more moderate forces.

In the aftermath of Robespierre’s fall, the government of France was controlled by the Directory, a committee of moderates who offered little more than stability. The greatest problem that confronted the Directory was the European war and its attendant costs. The reinstatement of conscription caused Frenchmen to look to other political leaders.

Napoleon is a controversial historical figure. He attempted to construct a new government under his absolute rule but remained dedicated to the principles of the Enlightenment.

Napoleon was born in Corsica and received an early military education. Without noble birth, his military career was truncated. The French Revolution eliminated many aristocratic commanders and made it possible for Bonaparte to establish a reputation for brilliance. In 1795 he crushed a Parisian revolt against the Directory. Immediately thereafter he enjoyed extraordinary victories in Syria, Egypt, and Italy. By 1799 he was sufficiently powerful to join a conspiracy against the Directory. The new government of which Napoleon was a member consisted of three consuls. As First Consul, Napoleon ended the de-Christianization campaign by signing the Concordat of 1801 with the Catholic church recognizing Catholicism as the religion of the French people. He also guaranteed the security of property taken during the revolution, thus eliminating the possibility of an aristocratic return to power. A plebiscite of 1802 rewarded the First Consul by granting him power for life.

The inevitable result of constant warfare was exhaustion. The first cracks in French military power appeared when it failed to crush Spanish guerillas in the Peninsular campaigns of 1808-1814. In 1812, the Napoleonic armies faltered during an ill-advised invasion of Russia. The armies of the tsar followed a scorched earth policy that left Napoleon’s forces exposed to the cruelties of the Russian winter. The might of the French military was destroyed. All of France’s former enemies rushed together to destroy the imperial forces in 1813 at the Battle of Nations near Leipzig. When allied forces took Paris, Napoleon abdicated and was exiled to the island of Elba. In 1815, the emperor escaped. In one last attempt, Napoleon faced the allied European nations at Waterloo only to be defeated for the final time. For a second time the emperor was exiled, this time to Saint Helena. He died there in 1821.

In 1804 Napoleon had himself proclaimed emperor of France. He took the task of government seriously and began a series of reforms extending to almost every facet of life. The emperor reformed the disastrous tax system, created a central banking system, rebuilt the internal transportation network to facilitate trade, and emphasized the role of science in higher education. Most important, Napoleon required a new codification of French law. In the revolutionary tradition, women were reduced to a secondary legal status in the Napoleonic Codes.

The inevitable result of constant warfare was exhaustion. In 1812 the Napoleonic armies faltered during an ill-advised invasion of Russia. The armies of the tsar followed a scorched earth policy that left Napoleon’s forces exposed to the cruelties of the Russian winter. The might of the French military was destroyed. All of France’s former enemies rushed together to destroy the imperial forces in 1813 at the Battle of Nations near Leipzig. When allied forces took Paris, Napoleon abdicated and was exiled to the island of Elba. In 1815 the emperor escaped. In one last attempt, Napoleon faced the allied European nations at Waterloo only to be defeated for the final time. For a second time the emperor was exiled, this time to Saint Helena. He died there in 1821.