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The '''French Revolution''' ({{lang-fr|Révolution française}} {{IPA-fr|ʁevɔlysjɔ̃ fʁɑ̃sɛːz|}}) began in May 1789 when the [[Ancien Régime]] was abolished in favour of a [[constitutional monarchy]]. Its replacement in September 1792 by the [[First French Republic]] led to the [[Execution of Louis XVI]] in January 1793, and an extended period of political turmoil. This culminated in the appointment of [[Napoleon]] as [[French_Consulate|First Consul]] in November 1799, which is generally taken as its end point. Many of its principles are now considered |
The '''French Revolution''' ({{lang-fr|Révolution française}} {{IPA-fr|ʁevɔlysjɔ̃ fʁɑ̃sɛːz|}}) began in May 1789 when the [[Ancien Régime]] was abolished in favour of a [[constitutional monarchy]]. Its replacement in September 1792 by the [[First French Republic]] led to the [[Execution of Louis XVI]] in January 1793, and an extended period of political turmoil. This culminated in the appointment of [[Napoleon]] as [[French_Consulate|First Consul]] in November 1799, which is generally taken as its end point. Many of its principles are now considered fundamental aspects of modern [[Liberal democracy]].{{sfn|Livesey|2001|p=19}} |
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The Revolution, which followed and initially drew significant influence from the [[American Revolution]], including the modelling of its [[Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen|guiding document]] on the American Declaration of Independence, as well as influence from other external sources, was one of a series of late 18th century [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment-based]] revolutions.<ref>Jourdan, Annie. (2007) ''The "Alien Origins" of the French Revolution: American, Scottish, Genevan, and Dutch Influences.'' Journal of the Western Society for French History.{{cite web |url=https://quod.lib.umich.edu/w/wsfh/0642292.0035.012/--alien-origins-of-the-french-revolution-american-scottish?rgn=main;view=fulltext |title=The Alien Origins of the French Revolution}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=G5MVAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA5|title=The Origin and Principles of the American Revolution, Compared with the Origin and Principles of the French Revolution|last1=Gentz|first1=Friedrich von|year=1800}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://oll-resources.s3.amazonaws.com/titles/2376/Gentz_AmericanRevolution1575_LFeBk.pdf#page=25|title=The Origin and Principles of the American Revolution, Compared with the Origin and Principles of the French Revolution (Full Publication)}}</ref> The [[causes of the French Revolution]] produced outcomes which radically changed French society, culminating into the creation of the [[First French Empire]].{{sfn|Rossignol|2006|pp=51-52}} Between 1700 and 1789, the French population increased from 18 million to 26 million, leading to large numbers of unemployed, accompanied by sharp rises in [[food prices]] caused by years of bad harvests.{{sfn|Fursenko, McArthur|1976|p=484}} High levels of state debt incurred during the [[American Revolutionary War]] led to tax increases, borne disproportionately by the lower classes.{{sfn|Tombs, Tombs|2007|p=179}} Exacerbated by an unusually cold winter in 1788/1789, widespread social distress led to the [[convocation]] of the [[Estates General of 1789|Estates General]] in May 1789. |
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The Revolution was one of a series of late 18th century regime changes, which included the [[American Revolution]], but despite sharing certain [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment ideas]] like [[social justice]], the [[causes of the French Revolution|underlying issues]] and thus responses were very different.{{sfn|Rossignol|2006|pp=51-52}} |
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Between 1700 and 1789, the French population increased from 18 million to 26 million, leading to large numbers of unemployed, accompanied by sharp rises in [[food prices]] caused by years of bad harvests.{{sfn|Fursenko, McArthur|1976|p=484}} High levels of state debt incurred during the [[American Revolutionary War]] led to tax increases, borne disproportionately by the lower classes.{{sfn|Tombs, Tombs|2007|p=179}} Exacerbated by an unusually cold winter in 1788/1789, widespread social distress led to the [[convocation]] of the [[Estates General of 1789|Estates General]] in May 1789. |
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The Estates were split into three separate houses, which allowed the [[French aristocracy|Nobility]] and [[Catholic clergy|Clergy]] to outvote the Third Estate representing the vast majority of the population. In June, the Commons invited the other two Estates to join them in the [[National Assembly (French Revolution)|National Assembly]]; initially led by moderates like [[Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette|Lafayette]], it became increasingly radical. The July [[Storming of the Bastille]] was followed by the [[Abolition of feudalism in France|abolition of feudalism]] in August, while the October [[Women's March on Versailles]] forced the royal court back to Paris. |
The Estates were split into three separate houses, which allowed the [[French aristocracy|Nobility]] and [[Catholic clergy|Clergy]] to outvote the Third Estate representing the vast majority of the population. In June, the Commons invited the other two Estates to join them in the [[National Assembly (French Revolution)|National Assembly]]; initially led by moderates like [[Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette|Lafayette]], it became increasingly radical. The July [[Storming of the Bastille]] was followed by the [[Abolition of feudalism in France|abolition of feudalism]] in August, while the October [[Women's March on Versailles]] forced the royal court back to Paris. |
Revision as of 11:47, 17 October 2020
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Date | 5 May 1789 – 9 November 1799 (10 years, 6 months and 4 days) |
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The French Revolution (French: Révolution française [ʁevɔlysjɔ̃ fʁɑ̃sɛːz]) began in May 1789 when the Ancien Régime was abolished in favour of a constitutional monarchy. Its replacement in September 1792 by the First French Republic led to the Execution of Louis XVI in January 1793, and an extended period of political turmoil. This culminated in the appointment of Napoleon as First Consul in November 1799, which is generally taken as its end point. Many of its principles are now considered fundamental aspects of modern Liberal democracy.[1]
The Revolution, which followed and initially drew significant influence from the American Revolution, including the modelling of its guiding document on the American Declaration of Independence, as well as influence from other external sources, was one of a series of late 18th century Enlightenment-based revolutions.[2][3][4] The causes of the French Revolution produced outcomes which radically changed French society, culminating into the creation of the First French Empire.[5] Between 1700 and 1789, the French population increased from 18 million to 26 million, leading to large numbers of unemployed, accompanied by sharp rises in food prices caused by years of bad harvests.[6] High levels of state debt incurred during the American Revolutionary War led to tax increases, borne disproportionately by the lower classes.[7] Exacerbated by an unusually cold winter in 1788/1789, widespread social distress led to the convocation of the Estates General in May 1789.
The Estates were split into three separate houses, which allowed the Nobility and Clergy to outvote the Third Estate representing the vast majority of the population. In June, the Commons invited the other two Estates to join them in the National Assembly; initially led by moderates like Lafayette, it became increasingly radical. The July Storming of the Bastille was followed by the abolition of feudalism in August, while the October Women's March on Versailles forced the royal court back to Paris.
The next three years were dominated by the political struggle between Louis XVI and the Legislative Assembly; his refusal to approve reforms and concerns external powers were preparing to intervene on his behalf led to the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars in April 1792. Public unrest at high prices, political stalemate and military defeat resulted in the Insurrection of 10 August 1792, abolition of the monarchy and establishment of the First French Republic on 22 September 1792. Its goals were to unify the French people by introducing fairer taxes and democratic elections, but Louis' execution in January 1793 caused deep divisions between moderate Girondins and more radical Montagnards.
European powers like Austria viewed the Revolution as a threat, and its course was closely shaped by external events. In February 1793, the Assembly announced a levée en masse or conscription law, triggering widespread unrest in South-West France; in June, popular agitation led by the Jacobin clubs in Paris removed the Girondin government. Led by Maximilien Robespierre, the Committee of Public Safety imposed price controls on food, abolished slavery, established universal suffrage and replaced the Catholic church with the Cult of the Supreme Being.
However, politics was increasingly dominated by the Reign of Terror, an attack on alleged "counter-revolutionaries". By the time it ended in July 1794, over 3,000 had been executed in Paris alone, including Robespierre. A series of Royalist and Jacobin revolts led to the suspension of elections and creation of the French Directory in November 1795; despite stabilising the currency, and military success, the strain of financing the war led to economic stagnation and internal divisions. [8] Dogged by charges of corruption, in November 1799 the Directory was abolished by the coup of 18 Brumaire led by Napoleon Bonaparte; the establishment of the French Consulate is generally viewed as marking the end of the Revolutionary period.
Many of the Revolution's phrases and symbols such as La Marseillaise and Liberté, fraternité, égalité, ou la mort, re-surfaced in similar upheavals, including the Russian Revolution over a century later.[9] Over the next two centuries, some of its key documents, such as the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, inspired campaigns for principles such as the abolition of slavery and universal suffrage.[10]
The Revolution ended Feudalism in France, emancipated individuals, promoted more equitable division of landed property, abolished the Nobility and created nominal equality of male citizens. It established the principles of total war by organising the resources of France and the lives of its citizens towards the objective of national defence.[11] Globally, it exported principles such as liberalism, Political radicalism, nationalism, and secularism, while its values and institutions dominate French politics to this day. Many historians regard the Revolution as one of the most important events in human history.[12][13] [8]
Causes
Historians view the Revolution as arising from the inability of the Ancien Régime to manage increasing social and economic inequality. Their causes included rapid population growth, high food prices and shortages due to crop failure, and the inability to finance Government debt, along with a highly regressive tax system.[14] Combined with underlying structural problems such as the stratified nature of late 18th century French society, it led to a crisis Louis XVI proved unable to manage.[15][16]
From the late 17th century onwards, political and cultural debate became part of general European society, rather than being confined to a governing elite. It took different forms, such as the English 'coffeehouse culture', and extended to areas colonised by Europeans, particularly British North America. Contacts between diverse groups in Edinburgh, Geneva, Boston, Amsterdam, Paris, London or Vienna were much greater than often appreciated. Education often included the European cultural expedition known as the Grand Tour, or attendance at a foreign university, while many were fluent in more than one language, French and Latin being the most common. A trans-national group sharing ideas and styles was not new; what changed were the numbers and social positions of those contributing.[17]
Under Louis XIV, the Court at Versailles determined culture, fashion and political power, a role underlined by the splendour of its architecture, intended to overwhelm the visitor and convince them of Royal omnipotence. In the 18th century, increases in literacy meant far more people were reading newspapers or journals, while Masonic lodges, coffee houses, and reading clubs provided areas where ideas and issues could be debated and discussed. In France, the emergence of this so-called "public sphere" meant Paris replaced Versailles as the cultural and intellectual centre; this left the Court isolated and detached, while gradually creating a belief Paris should also be deciding political issues.[18]
In the decade prior to the Revolution, France suffered a severe economic depression, partly the result of high levels of debt incurred in a series of wars fought to challenge British naval and commercial power. Although French support was crucial to American victory in the American Revolutionary War, it was also costly; the separate 1778-1783 Anglo-French War ended in stalemate, and was primarily a naval conflict, the most expensive type of warfare. However, modern studies show that in 1788, the ratio of debt to GNP in France was 55.6%, significantly lower than that of Britain, which was 181.8%.[19] The difference was that while the British financial system could service this, structural weaknesses in government fiscal policy meant the French could not. The political impasse over reform led to the calling of the Estates-General, which became radicalised as it attempted to exert control over public finances; it was this that led to the Revolution, not the size of the debt itself.[20]
This coincided with major societal changes, including population growth; from 1700 to 1789, it expanded from 18 to 26 million, making France the most populous state in Europe. Economic depression created large numbers of vulnerable urban and rural poor, while the French agricultural sector failed to meet this need; while food prices rose by 65% from 1770 to 1790, real wages increased by only 22%.[21] This was particularly damaging for the regime since many blamed price increases on the failure of the government to prevent profiteering.[22] By the spring of 1789, a series of poor harvests and closure of the transportation network due to a severe winter had created a rural peasantry with nothing to sell, and an urban proletariat whose purchasing power had collapsed.[23]
Louis was not indifferent to the crisis but tended to back down in the face of opposition, and attempts to enact reforms were blocked by the regional Parlements who largely controlled tax policy.[24] His regime failed to deal with popular anger at the nobility and clergy, who were largely exempt from tax, and resentment of the court. A primary target was Queen Marie-Antoinette, viewed as a spendthrift and Austrian spy, and blamed for the dismissal of 'progressive' ministers like Jacques Necker. Enlightenment ideas on equality and democracy provided an intellectual framework for dealing with these issues, while the American Revolution was seen as confirmation of their practical application.[25]
Ancien Régime
Financial crisis
In 1774 Louis XVI ascended to the throne in the middle of a financial crisis in which the state was faced with a budget deficit and was nearing bankruptcy.[26] This was due in part to France's costly involvements in the Seven Years' War and later the American Revolutionary War.[27] In May 1776, finance minister Turgot was dismissed, after failing to enact reforms. The next year, Jacques Necker, a foreigner, was appointed Comptroller-General of Finance. He could not be made an official minister because he was a Protestant.[28]
Necker realised that the country's extremely regressive tax system subjected the lower classes to a heavy burden,[28] while numerous exemptions existed for the nobility and clergy.[29] He argued that the country could not be taxed higher; that tax exemptions for the nobility and clergy must be reduced; and proposed that borrowing more money would solve the country's fiscal shortages. Necker published a report to support this claim that underestimated the deficit by roughly 36 million livres, and proposed restricting the power of the parlements.[28]
This was not received well by the King's ministers, and Necker, hoping to bolster his position, argued to be made a minister. The King refused, Necker was dismissed, and Charles Alexandre de Calonne was appointed to the Comptrollership.[28] Calonne initially spent liberally, but he quickly realised the critical financial situation and proposed a new tax code.[30]
The proposal included a consistent land tax, which would include taxation of the nobility and clergy. Faced with opposition from the parlements, Calonne organised the summoning of the Assembly of Notables. But the Assembly failed to endorse Calonne's proposals and instead weakened his position through its criticism. The Notables concluded that this kind of change must be approved by the people in the form of the Estates-General.
His failures resulted in Calonne's dismissal, and in May 1787 he was replaced with Brienne. Brienne presented a package to the Notables that was not dissimilar to Calonne's, but without the sale of church land. This was again rejected and the Notables dissolved. Brienne attempted to appeal this judgement by sending his reforms to the Parlement in early June; the Parlement endorsed the principal of the reforms, but like the Notables, concluded that the changes could only be made by the Estates-General. They announced their decision in July, following the Day of the Tiles, a formal resistance by the people to Brienne and the King's efforts to push reforms. Louis attempted to compel the Parlement to approve the reforms via a lit de justice, which the Parlement declared invalid.[31]
A Royal Session was called for 19 November 1787, between the Parlement and the King. The Parlement resisted royal mandate even in King's presence. In response, the King had no choice but to announce the calling of the Estates-General for May 1789, the first time the body had been summoned since 1614. This was a signal that the Bourbon monarchy was in a weakened state and subject to the demands of its people.[32]
Estates-General of 1789
The Estates-General was split into three bodies; the First Estate or clergy, the Second Estate or nobility, and the Third Estate or 'Commons'. Unlike the Parliament of England, their role was only to advise the king, not enact legislation, with France more power devolved to the regional Parlements. Originally set up as law courts, by the mid-18th century they had wide-ranging control over tax and legal affairs, the largest being the Parlement de Paris.[33]
Each had one vote, which allowed the clergy and nobility to unite against the Commons to preserve their privilege. Elections were held in the spring of 1789, for the first time since 1614; only members of an Estate were allowed to vote for their representatives. 303 deputies were returned for the First Estate, representing 100,000 Catholic clergy; nearly 10% of French lands were controlled by bishops and monasteries, while the Church collected its own taxes from peasants.[34] Fifty-one were bishops, the wealthiest of whom had incomes of 50,000 livres a year; more than two-thirds were ordinary parish priests who lived on less than 500 and were more representative of the working classes than the lawyers and officials of the Third Estate.[35]
The Second Estate had 291 deputies, representing about 400,000 men and women, who owned about 25% of the land and collected seigneurial dues and rents from their peasant tenants. Like the clergy this was not a uniform body, being divided into the Noblesse d'épée, or traditional aristocracy, and the Noblesse de robe. The latter derived rank from judicial or administrative posts and tended to be hard-working professionals, who dominated the regional Parlements and were often intensely socially conservative. Neither the First or Second Estates paid tax.[36]
610 deputies sat for the Third Estate, in theory representing 95% of the population, although voting rights were restricted to French-born or naturalised males, aged 25 years or more, residing where the vote was to take place and who paid taxes. Half were well educated lawyers or local officials, nearly a third in trades or industry, while fifty-one were wealthy land owners.[37]
To assist delegates, Cahiers de doléances, or lists of grievances, were compiled.[38] Despite containing ideas that would have seemed radical only months before, most remained generally supportive of the monarchical system. It was generally assumed the function of the Estates-General would be to enact financial measures and taxes, rather than engaging in fundamental constitutional change.[39]
The lifting of press censorship allowed widespread distribution of political writings, mostly produced by liberal members of the First and Second Estates.[40] One such pamphlet titled Qu'est-ce que le tiers état? was published in January 1789 by the Abbé Sieyès, a political theorist and Catholic clergyman, who was elected as a deputy for the Third Estate. He argued for its paramount importance, claiming: "What is the Third Estate? Everything. What has it been? Nothing. What does it want to be? Something."[41]
The Estates-General convened in the Menus-Plaisirs du Roi on 5 May 1789, near the Palace of Versailles rather than in Paris, which was interpreted as an attempt to control their debates. As was customary, each of the Estates sat in a separate room, whose furnishings and opening ceremonies deliberately emphasised the superiority of the First and Second Estates. They also insisted on enforcing the rule only those who owned land could sit as deputies for the Second Estate, thus excluding the immensely popular aristocrat Mirabeau.[42]
Since the Commons could always be outvoted by the other two Estates, from the beginning a central objective was for all three to sit as one house. In support of this, the Third Estate demanded the credentials of all deputies be approved by the Estates-General as a whole, rather than each Estate verifying its own; once approved, the built-in weighting of the Estates-General in favour of a minority would be dissolved. After an extended stalemate, Necker suggested each Estate should verify its own members' credentials and the king should act as arbitrator.[43]
On 10 June, Sieyès moved the Commons proceed with verifying its own deputies, while inviting the other two Estates to take part, but not to wait, a process completed on 17 June. By 19th over 100 members of the clergy had joined them, leading to a far more radical measure. Claiming to represent more than 96% of the population, the deputies declared themselves the National Assembly. They invited the other Estates to join them, but made it clear they intended to conduct the nation's affairs with or without them.[44]
In an attempt to prevent the Assembly from convening, Louis XVI ordered the closure of the Salle des États, claiming it needed to be prepared for a royal speech. On 20 June, the deputies met in a tennis court outside Versailles, where they swore to swear the Tennis Court Oath, agreeing not to disperse until they had given France a constitution. By 27 June, they had been joined by the majority of the clergy, plus forty-seven members of the nobility, and Louis backed down; messages of support for the Assembly poured in from Paris and other cities.[45]
Constitutional monarchy; July 1789 to September 1791
Storming of the Bastille
Even these limited concessions went too far for reactionaries headed by Marie Antoinette and Louis' younger brother the Comte d'Artois; on their advice, Louis dismissed Necker on 11 July.[46] Fears he was also planning to close the Assembly using foreign mercenaries led to riots on 12 July; the deputies went into nonstop session to prevent this, while members of the elite Gardes Françaises regiment refused to fire on protesters.[47]
On 14th, many of these regulars joined the mob in attacking the Bastille, a Royal fortress with large stores of arms and ammunition; after several hours of fighting, which cost the lives of 83 attackers, Governor Marquis de Launay surrendered. He was taken to the Hôtel de Ville and executed, his head placed on a pike and paraded about the city; the fortress was then torn down in remarkably quick time. Although rumoured to hold large numbers of prisoners, only seven were found; four forgers, two noblemen held for "immoral behaviour", and a murder suspect. Nevertheless, as a potent symbol of the Ancien Régime, its destruction was viewed as a triumph and Bastille Day is still celebrated each year.[48]
Alarmed by the violence, Louis backed down and appointed Lafayette commander of the National Guard. A new governmental structure was created for Paris known as the Commune, headed by Jean-Sylvain Bailly, former president of the Assembly. On 17 July, Louis visited Paris accompanied by 100 deputies, where he was met by Bailly and accepted a tricolore cockade to loud cheers. However, it was clear power had shifted from the Court; he was welcomed as 'Louis XVI, father of the French and king of a free people.'[49]
The short-lived unity enforced on the Assembly by a common threat quickly dissipated as deputies argued over constitutional forms, while civil authority rapidly deteriorated. On 22 July, former Finance Minister Foullon and his son were lynched by a Parisian mob, with neither Bailly or Lafayette able to prevent it. In rural areas, wild rumours and paranoia resulted in the formation of militia and an agrarian insurrection known as la Grande Peur.[50] The breakdown of law and order and frequent attacks on aristocratic property led much of the nobility to flee abroad; these émigrés funded reactionary forces within France and urged foreign monarchs to back a counter-revolution.[51]
Abolition of feudalism
On 4 and 11 August 1789 the National Constituent Assembly abolished privileges and feudalism (numerous peasant revolts had almost brought feudalism to an end) in the August Decrees, sweeping away personal serfdom,[52] exclusive hunting rights and other seigneurial rights of the Second Estate (nobility).
Also the tithe (a 10% tax for the Church, gathered by the First Estate (clergy)), which had been the main source of income for many clergymen, was abolished. [53] The Civil Constitution of the Clergy (summer 1790–spring 1791).</ref> During the course of a few hours nobles, clergy, towns, provinces, companies and cities lost their special privileges.[54]
Historian Georges Lefebvre summarises the night's work:
"Without debate the Assembly enthusiastically adopted equality of taxation and redemption of all manorial rights except for those involving personal servitude – which were to be abolished without indemnification. Other proposals followed with the same success: the equality of legal punishment, admission of all to public office, abolition of venality in office,[55] conversion of the tithe into payments subject to redemption, freedom of worship, prohibition of plural holding of benefices ... Privileges of provinces and towns were offered as a last sacrifice."[56]
Originally the peasants were supposed to pay for the release of seigneurial dues; these dues affected more than a fourth of the farmland in France and provided most of the income of the large landowners.[57] The majority refused to pay and in 1793 the obligation was cancelled. Thus the peasants got their land free, and also no longer paid the tithe to the church.[58]
Furet emphasises that the decisions of August 1789 survived and became an integral part of
"the founding texts of modern France. They destroyed aristocratic society from top to bottom, along with its structure of dependencies and privileges. For this structure they substituted the modern, autonomous individual, free to do whatever was not prohibited by law ... The Revolution thus distinguished itself quite early by its radical individualism"[59]
The old judicial system, based on the 13 regional parlements, was suspended in November 1789, and officially abolished in September 1790. The main institutional pillars of the old regime had vanished.[60]
Declaration of the Rights of Man
On 26 August 1789 the Assembly published the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which comprised a statement of principles rather than a constitution with legal effect.[61]
The National Constituent Assembly functioned not only as a legislature, but also as a body to draft a new constitution.
Women's March on Versailles
Fuelled by rumours of a reception for the King's bodyguards on 1 October 1789, at 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 Ville, demanding that city officials address their concerns.[62] The women were responding to the harsh economic situations they faced, especially bread shortages. They also demanded an end to royal 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 cannons and a variety of smaller weapons. Twenty thousand National Guardsmen under the command of Lafayette responded to keep order, and members of the mob stormed the palace, killing several guards.[63] Lafayette ultimately persuaded 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 legitimising the National Assembly.
Revolution and the Church
The Revolution caused a massive shift of power from the Roman Catholic Church to the state.[64] Under the Ancien Régime, the Church had been the largest single landowner in the country, owning about 10% of the land in the kingdom.[65] The Church was exempt from paying taxes to the government, while it levied a tithe – a 10% tax on income, often collected in the form of crops – on the general population, only a fraction of which it then redistributed to the poor.[65]
Resentment towards the Church weakened its power during the opening of the Estates General in May 1789. The Church composed the First Estate with 130,000 members of the clergy. When the National Assembly was later created in June 1789 by the Third Estate, the clergy voted to join them, which perpetuated the destruction of the Estates General as a governing body.[66] The National Assembly began to enact social and economic reform. Legislation sanctioned on 4 August 1789 abolished the Church's authority to impose the tithe. In an attempt to address the financial crisis, the Assembly declared, on 2 November 1789, that the property of the Church was "at the disposal of the nation".[67] They used this property to back a new currency, the assignats. Thus, the nation had now also taken on the responsibility of the Church, which included paying the clergy and caring for the poor, the sick and the orphaned.[68] In December, the Assembly began to sell the lands to the highest bidder to raise revenue, effectively decreasing the value of the assignats by 25% in two years.[69] In autumn 1789, legislation abolished monastic vows and on 13 February 1790 all religious orders were dissolved.[70] Monks and nuns were encouraged to return to private life and a small percentage did eventually marry.[71]
The Civil Constitution of the Clergy, passed on 12 July 1790, turned the remaining clergy into employees of the state. This established an election system for parish priests and bishops and set a pay rate for the clergy. Many Catholics objected to the election system because it effectively denied the authority of the Pope in Rome over the French Church. In October a group of 30 bishops wrote a declaration saying they could not accept that law, and this protest also fueled civilian opposition against that law.[72]
Eventually, in November 1790, the National Assembly began to require an oath of loyalty to the Civil Constitution from all the members of the clergy.[71] This led to a schism between those clergy who swore the required oath and accepted the new arrangement and those who remained loyal to the Pope. Priests swearing the oath were indicated as 'constitutional', those not taking the oath as 'non-juring' or 'refractory' clergy.[72] Overall, 24% of the clergy nationwide took the oath.[73] This decree stiffened the resistance against the state's interference with the church, especially in the west of France like in Normandy, Brittany and the Vendée, where only a few priests took the oath and the civilian population turned against the revolution.[72] Widespread refusal led to legislation against the clergy, "forcing them into exile, deporting them forcibly, or executing them as traitors".[69] Pope Pius VI never accepted the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, further isolating the Church in France.
Writing the first constitution
Necker, Mounier, Lally-Tollendal and others argued unsuccessfully for a senate, with members appointed by the crown on the nomination of the people. The bulk of the nobles argued for an aristocratic upper house 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 provinces with 83 départements, uniformly administered and roughly equal in area and population.[60]
Amid the Assembly's preoccupation with constitutional affairs, the financial crisis had continued largely unaddressed, and the deficit had only increased. Honoré Mirabeau now led the move to address this matter, and the Assembly gave Necker complete financial dictatorship.
A new Republican Calendar was established in October 1793, with 10-day weeks that made it very difficult for Catholics to remember Sundays and saints' days. Workers complained it reduced the number of first-day-of-the-week holidays from 52 to 37.[74]
During the Reign of Terror, extreme efforts of dechristianisation ensued, including the imprisonment and massacre of priests and destruction of churches and religious images throughout France. An effort was made to replace the Catholic Church altogether, with civic festivals replacing religious ones. The establishment of the Cult of Reason was the final step of radical dechristianisation. These events led to a widespread disillusionment with the Revolution and to counter-rebellions across France. Locals often resisted de-Christianisation by attacking revolutionary agents and hiding members of the clergy who were being hunted. Eventually, Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety were forced to denounce the campaign,[75] replacing the Cult of Reason with the deist but still non-Christian Cult of the Supreme Being. The Concordat of 1801 between Napoleon and the Church ended the de-Christianisation 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 Republic via the separation of church and state on 11 December 1905. The persecution of the Church led to a counter-revolution known as the Revolt in the Vendée.[76]
Historians Lynn Hunt and Jack Censer argue that some French Protestants, the Huguenots, wanted an anti-Catholic regime, and that Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire helped fuel this resentment.[77] The Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for example, had told French citizens that it was "manifestly contrary to the law of nature... that a handful of people should gorge themselves with superfluities while the hungry multitude goes in want of necessities."[78] Historian John McManners writes, "In eighteenth-century France throne and altar were commonly spoken of as in close alliance; their simultaneous collapse ... would one day provide the final proof of their interdependence."[79]
Intrigues and radicalism
Factions within the Assembly began to clarify. The aristocrat Jacques Antoine Marie de Cazalès and the abbé Jean-Sifrein Maury led what would become known as the right wing, the opposition to revolution (this party sat on the right-hand side of the Assembly). The "Royalist democrats" or monarchiens, allied with Necker, inclined towards organising France along lines similar to the British constitutional model; they included Jean Joseph Mounier, the Comte de Lally-Tollendal, the comte de Clermont-Tonnerre, and Pierre Victor Malouet, comte de Virieu.
The "National Party", representing the centre or centre-left of the assembly, included Honoré Mirabeau, Lafayette, and Bailly; while Adrien Duport, Barnave and Alexandre Lameth represented somewhat more extreme views. Almost alone in his radicalism on the left was the Arras lawyer Maximilien Robespierre, supported by Pétion de Villeneuve and Buzot. Abbé Sieyès led in proposing legislation in this period and successfully forged consensus for some time between the political centre and the left. In Paris, various committees, the mayor, the assembly of representatives, and the individual districts each claimed authority independent of the others. The increasingly middle-class National Guard under Lafayette also slowly emerged as a power in its own right, as did other self-generated assemblies.
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 émigrés. On 14 July 1790, and for several days following, crowds in the Champ de Mars celebrated the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille with the Fête de la Fédération; Talleyrand performed a mass; participants swore an oath of "fidelity to the nation, the law, and the king"; the King and the royal family actively participated.[80]
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 Oath, the communes had bound themselves to meet continuously until France had a constitution. Right-wing elements now argued for a new election, but Mirabeau prevailed, asserting that the status of the assembly had fundamentally changed, and that no new election should take place before completing the constitution.[81]
In late 1790 the French army was in considerable disarray. The military officer corps was largely composed of noblemen, who found it increasingly difficult to maintain order within the ranks. In some cases, soldiers (drawn from the lower classes) had turned against their aristocratic commanders and attacked them. At Nancy, General Bouillé successfully put down one such rebellion, only to be accused of being anti-revolutionary for doing so. This and other such incidents spurred a mass desertion as more and more officers defected to other countries, leaving a dearth of experienced leadership within the army.[82]
This period also saw the rise of the political "clubs" in French politics. Foremost among these was the Jacobin Club; 152 members had affiliated with the Jacobins by 10 August 1790. The Jacobin Society began as a broad, general organisation for political debate, but as it grew in members, various factions developed with widely differing views. Several of these factions broke off to form their own clubs, such as the Club of '89.[83]
Meanwhile, 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 trials 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 practise a trade through the purchase of a license; strikes became illegal.[84]
Flight to Varennes
Louis XVI was increasingly dismayed by the direction of the revolution. His brother, the Comte d'Artois and his queen, Marie Antoinette, urged a stronger stance against the revolution and support for the émigrés, while he was resistant to any course that would see him openly side with foreign powers against the Assembly. Eventually, fearing for his own safety and that of his family, he decided to flee Paris to the Austrian border, having been assured of the loyalty of the border garrisons.
Louis cast his lot with General Bouillé, who condemned both the emigration and the Assembly, and promised him refuge and support in his camp at Montmédy. On the night of 20 June 1791 the royal family fled the Tuileries Palace dressed as servants, while their servants dressed as nobles.
However, late the next day, the King was recognised and arrested at Varennes and returned to Paris. The Assembly provisionally suspended the King. He and Queen Marie Antoinette remained held under guard.[85] The King's flight had a profound impact on public opinion, turning popular sentiment further against the clergy and nobility, and built momentum for the institution of a constitutional monarchy.[85]
Completing the constitution
As most of the Assembly still favoured a constitutional monarchy rather than a republic, the various groups reached a compromise which left Louis XVI as little more than a figurehead: he was forced 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 abdication.
However, Jacques Pierre Brissot 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 Mars to sign the petition. Georges Danton and Camille Desmoulins gave fiery speeches. The Assembly called for the municipal authorities to "preserve public order". The National Guard under Lafayette's command confronted the crowd. The soldiers responded to a barrage of stones by firing into the crowd, killing between 13 and 50 people.[86] The incident cost Lafayette and his National Guard much public support.
In the wake of the massacre the authorities closed many of the patriotic clubs, as well as radical newspapers such as Jean-Paul Marat's L'Ami du Peuple. Danton fled to England; Desmoulins and Marat went into hiding.[87]
Meanwhile, in August 1791, a new threat arose from abroad: the King's brother-in-law Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II, King Frederick William II of Prussia, and the King's brother Charles-Philippe, comte d'Artois, issued the Declaration of Pillnitz, declaring their intention to bring the French king in the position "to consolidate the basis of a monarchical government" and that they were preparing their own troops for action,[88] The flight of the king and the decline of the French monarchy (summer 1791–summer 1792).</ref> hinting at an invasion of France on the King's behalf.[89]
Although Leopold himself sought to avoid war and made the declaration to satisfy the Comte d'Artois and the other émigrés, the reaction within France was ferocious. The French people expressed no respect for the dictates of foreign monarchs, and the threat of force merely hastened their militarisation.[90]
Even before the 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, 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. With this capstone, the National Constituent Assembly adjourned in a final session on 30 September 1791.[91]
Legislative Assembly; October 1791 to September 1792
The Legislative Assembly first met on 1 October 1791, elected by those 4 million men – out of a population of 6 million men over the age of 25 – who paid a certain minimum amount of taxes.[92] Under the Constitution of 1791, France would function as a constitutional monarchy. The King had to share power with the elected Legislative Assembly, but he retained his royal veto and the ability to select ministers. Early on, the King vetoed legislation that threatened the émigrés with death and that decreed that every non-juring clergyman 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 crisis.
Late in 1791, members of the Assembly who supported war against Austria and Prussia became known as 'Girondins', after the province of Gironde. Those who opposed war were dubbed 'Montagnards' or 'Jacobins'; the dispute hardened into a bitter enmity over the next year and a half.{ The Girondins saw war as a way to strengthen support for their revolutionary government, and were confident of victory; On 20 April 1792, the French Revolutionary Wars began when French troops invaded the Austrian Netherlands.[93]
Failure of the constitutional monarchy
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The Legislative Assembly degenerated into chaos before October 1792. Francis Charles Montague concluded in 1911, "In the attempt to govern, the Assembly failed altogether. It left behind an empty treasury, an undisciplined army and navy, and a people debauched by safe and successful riot."[94]
Lyons argues that the Constituent Assembly had liberal, rational, and individualistic goals that seem to have been largely achieved by 1791. However, it failed to consolidate the gains of the Revolution, which continued with increasing momentum and escalating radicalism until 1794. Lyons identifies six reasons for this escalation. First, the king did not accept the limitations on his powers, and mobilised support from foreign monarchs to reverse it. Second, the effort to overthrow the Roman Catholic Church, sell off its lands, close its monasteries and its charitable operations, and replace it with an unpopular makeshift system caused deep consternation among the pious and the peasants. Third, the economy was badly hurt by the issuance of ever increasing amounts of paper money (assignats), which caused more and more inflation; the rising prices hurt the urban poor who spent most of their income on food. Fourth, the rural peasants demanded liberation from the heavy system of taxes and dues owed to local landowners. Fifth, the working class of Paris and the other cities – the sans-culottes – resented the fact that the property owners and professionals had taken all the spoils of the Revolution. Finally, foreign powers threatened to overthrow the Revolution, which responded with extremism and systematic violence in its own defence.[95]
Constitutional crisis
In the summer of 1792, a large number of Parisians were against the monarchy, and hoped that the Assembly would depose the king, but the Assembly hesitated. At dawn on 10 August 1792, a large, angry crowd of insurgents and popular militias, supported by the revolutionary Paris Commune,[96] marched on the Tuileries.[97] They attacked the palace and killed the Swiss Guards who were assigned for the protection of the king.[96]
Around 8:00 am, Louis opted to seek safety with his wife and children in the Assembly, sitting in permanent session in Salle du Manège opposite the Tuileries.[97] Little more than a third of the deputies were present, almost all of who were Jacobins and just after 11:00 am, they voted to 'temporarily relieve the king', effectively suspending the monarchy.[98] In reaction, on 19 August the Prussian general Duke of Brunswick invaded France[99] and besieged Longwy.[97]
On 26 August, the Assembly decreed the deportation of refractory priests in the west of France, as "causes of danger to the fatherland", to destinations like French Guiana. In reaction, peasants in the Vendée took over a town, in another step toward civil war.[97] What remained of a national government depended on the support of the insurrectionary Commune. With enemy troops advancing, the Commune looked for potential traitors in Paris.[100][101]
On 2, 3 and 4 September 1792, hundreds of Parisians, supporters of the revolution, infuriated by Verdun being captured by the Prussian enemy, the uprisings in the west of France, and rumours that the incarcerated prisoners in Paris were conspiring with the foreign enemy, raided the Parisian prisons and murdered between 1,000 and 1,500 prisoners, many of them Catholic priests, aristocrats but also common criminals. Jean-Paul Marat, an ally of Robespierre, urged the rest of France to follow the example of Paris; neither the Assembly or Paris Commune seemed either able or willing to stop the bloodshed.[97]
Gangs of National Guardsmen and fédérés entered the prisons where they killed over 1,400, mostly nonjuring priests. The Commune then sent a circular letter to the other cities of France inviting them to follow this example, and many cities launched their own massacres of prisoners and priests in the "September massacres". The Assembly could offer only feeble resistance. In October, however, there was a counterattack accusing the instigators, especially Marat, of being terrorists. This led to a political contest between the more moderate Girondists and the more radical Montagnards inside the convention, with rumour used as a weapon by both sides. The Girondists lost ground when they seemed too conciliatory. But the pendulum swung again and after Thermidor, the men who had endorsed the massacres were denounced as terrorists.[100][101]
Chaos persisted until the Convention, elected by universal male suffrage and 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 monarchy and declared a republic. The following day – 22 September 1792, the first morning of the new Republic – was later retroactively adopted as the beginning of Year One of the French Republican Calendar.[102]
French Revolutionary Wars
From May 1792 to June 1815 France was engaged almost continuously (with two short breaks) in wars with Britain and a changing coalition of other major powers. The many French successes led to the spread of the French revolutionary ideals into neighbouring countries, and indeed across much of Europe. However, the final defeat of Napoleon in 1814 (and 1815) brought a reaction that reversed some – but not all – of the revolutionary achievements in France and Europe. The Bourbons were restored to the throne, with the brother of King Louis XVI becoming King Louis XVIII.
The politics of the period inevitably drove France towards war with Austria and its allies. The King, many of 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. The forces opposing war were much weaker. Barnave and his supporters among the Feuillants feared a war they thought France had little chance to win and which they feared might lead to greater radicalisation of the revolution. On the other end of the political spectrum Robespierre opposed a war on two grounds, fearing that it would strengthen the monarchy and military at the expense of the revolution, and that it would incur the anger of ordinary people in Austria and elsewhere. The Austrian emperor Leopold II, brother of Marie Antoinette, may have wished to avoid war, but he died on 1 March 1792.[103] France preemptively declared war on Austria (20 April 1792) and Prussia joined on the Austrian side a few weeks later. The invading Prussian army faced little resistance until it was checked at the Battle of Valmy (20 September 1792) and forced to withdraw.
The new-born Republic followed up on this success with a series of victories in Belgium and the Rhineland in the fall of 1792. The French armies defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Jemappes on 6 November, and had soon taken over most of the Austrian Netherlands. This brought them into conflict with Britain and the Dutch Republic, which wished to preserve the independence of the southern Netherlands from France. After the French king's execution in January 1793, these powers, along with Spain and most other European states, joined the war against France. Almost immediately, French forces suffered defeats on many fronts, and were driven out of their newly conquered territories in the spring of 1793. At the same time, the republican regime was forced to deal with rebellions against its authority in much of western and southern France. But the allies failed to take advantage of French disunity, and by the autumn of 1793 the republican regime had defeated most of the internal rebellions and halted the allied advance into France itself.
This stalemate ended in the summer of 1794 with dramatic French victories. The French defeated the allied army at the Battle of Fleurus, leading to a full Allied withdrawal from the Austrian Netherlands. They pushed the allies to the east bank of the Rhine, allowing France, by the beginning of 1795, to conquer the Dutch Republic itself. The House of Orange was expelled and replaced by the Batavian Republic, a French satellite state. These victories led to the collapse of the anti-French coalition. Prussia, having effectively abandoned the coalition in the fall of 1794, made peace with revolutionary France at Basel in April 1795, and soon thereafter Spain also made peace with France. Britain and Austria were the only major powers to remain at war with France.
Colonial uprisings
Although the French Revolution had a dramatic impact in numerous areas of Europe, the French colonies felt a particular influence. As the Martinican author Aimé Césaire put it, "there was in each French colony a specific revolution, that occurred on the occasion of the French Revolution, in tune with it."[104]
The Haitian Revolution (Saint Domingue) became a central example of slave uprisings in French colonies. In the 1780s, Saint-Domingue had been France's wealthiest colony, producing more sugar than all the British West Indies colonies put together. During the Revolution, the National Convention voted to abolish slavery in February 1794, months after the rebelling slaves had already announced an abolition of slavery in Saint-Domingue.[105] However, the 1794 decree was only implemented in Saint-Domingue, Guadeloupe and Guyane, and was a dead letter in Senegal, Mauritius, Réunion and Martinique, the last of which had been conquered by the British, who maintained the institution of slavery on that Caribbean island.[106]
First Republic 1792-1795
Proclamation of the First Republic
In late August, elections were held for the National Convention; in the interval before it assembled, a series of extra-judicial killings took place in Paris, known as the September Massacres. Responsibility is still disputed, variously being ascribed to Georges Danton or Jean-Paul Marat; while there is no direct proof of their involvement, they did nothing to stop it. Over four days from 2 to 6 September, members of the National Guard summarily executed between 1,100 to 1,600 prisoners, of whom more than 72% were common criminals.[107]
It was in this atmosphere the Convention assembled on 20 September, split into three primary groups; radical Montagnards, including Robespierre, Danton and Marat, moderate Girondins, headed by Brissot, and the majority or la Plaine, who belonged to neither. Headed by Bertrand Barère, Pierre Joseph Cambon and Lazare Carnot, this central faction acted as a swing vote, preventing complete deadlock.[108] On 22 September, the French First Republic replaced the monarchy; a new calendar was introduced on 24 October 1793, 1792 becoming Year One of the new Republic.[52]
The next few months were taken up with the trial of Citoyen Louis Capet, formerly Louis XVI; while members of the Convention were evenly divided on the question of his guilt, they were increasingly influenced by radicals concentrated in the Jacobin clubs and Paris Commune. The Brunswick Manifesto issued by the Allies in July threatened retaliation against those who opposed their advance or reinstatement of the monarchy. This made it easy to portray him as a threat to the Revolution, confirmed when extracts from his personal correspondence allegedly showed him conspiring with Royalist exiles serving in their armies.[109]
On 17 January 1793, the Assembly condemned Louis to death for "conspiracy against public liberty and general safety", by a margin of 361 to 288; another 72 members voted to execute him subject to a variety of delaying conditions. The sentence was carried out on 21 January on the Place de la Révolution, now the Place de la Concorde.[110] Horrified conservatives across Europe called for the destruction of revolutionary France; in February the Convention anticipated this by declaring war on Britain and the Dutch Republic; these countries were later joined by Spain, Portugal, Naples and the Tuscany in the so-called War of the First Coalition.[111]
Political crisis; Fall of the Girondins
By declaring war, the Convention hoped to mobilise revolutionary fervour and blame rising prices, shortages and unemployment as arising from external threats. Instead, the Parisian urban poor directed their anger against the Girondins, and when the first conscription measure or Levée en Masse was announced on 24 February, it sparked riots. Many Girondin deputies now left Paris, seeking to marshall support in the regions; already unsettled by changes imposed on the church, in March the traditionally conservative and Royalist Vendée rose in revolt. On 18th, Dumouriez was defeated at Neerwinden and defected to the Austrians, followed by risings in Bordeaux, Lyon, Toulon, Marseilles, Caen. The Republic seemed on the verge of collapse. [112]
The urgency of these issues led to the creation on 6 April 1793 of the Committee of Public Safety, an executive committee accountable to the Convention.[113] The Girondins made a fatal political error by indicting Marat before the Revolutionary Tribunal for allegedly directing the September massacres; he was quickly acquitted, further isolating them from the sans-culottes. After the radical Jacques Hébert called for a popular revolt against the "henchmen of Louis Capet" on 24 May, he was arrested by the Commission of Twelve, a Girondin-dominated tribunal set up to expose 'plots'. When a delegation from the Commune protested, the Commission warned that "if by your incessant rebellions something befalls the representatives of the nation,...Paris will be obliterated".[112]
Growing discontent and economic hardship allowed the Jacobin clubs to mobilise against the Girondins; backed by the Commune and elements of the National Guard, on 31 May they attempted to seize power in a coup. Although persuaded to disperse, on 2 June the Convention was surrounded by a crowd of up to 80,000, demanding cheap bread, unemployment pay and political reforms, including restriction of the vote to the sans-culottes, and the right to remove deputies at will.[114] Ten members of the Commission, plus another twenty-nine members of the Girondin faction were arrested, and on 10 June, Robespierre and the Jacobins took over the Committee of Public Safety.[115]
On 24 June, the Convention adopted the new Constitution, which contained various progressive and radical reforms, in particular the establishment of universal male suffrage. However, normal legal processes were suspended following the assassination of Marat on 13 July by the Girondist-sympthiser Charlotte Corday, which the Committee of Public Safety used as an excuse to take control. The new revolutionary state had four main areas of focus; economic regulation, war, punitive violence against internal opponents, and replacement of political debate by state ideology. In many ways, this was a return to the France of Louis XIV.[116]
Although many of the provinces were in open rebellion against Paris, this did not necessarily mean they were united. While areas like the Vendée and Brittany were strongly Catholic and Royalist, the majority were led by moderate Girondists who supported the Republic but opposed the regime in Paris. On 17 August, the Convention voted a second levée en masse; despite initial problems in equipping and supplying such large numbers, by mid-October Republican forces had re-taken Lyon, Marseilles and Bordeaux, while defeating Coalition armies at Hondschoote and Wattignies.[117]
Revolutionary Terror
The Reign of Terror began as a way of harnessing revolutionary fervour, but quickly degenerated into the settlement of personal grievances. At the end of July, the Convention set price controls over a wide range of goods, with the death penalty for hoarders, and on 9 September approved the formation of 'revolutionary forces' to enforce them. On 17th, the Law of Suspects ordered the arrest of suspected "enemies of freedom", initiating what became known as the Reign of Terror. According to archival records, from September 1793 to July 1794 some 16,600 people were executed on charges of counter-revolutionary activity; another 40,000 may have been summarily executed or died awaiting trial.[118]
Fixed prices, death for 'hoarders' or 'profiteers', and confiscation of grain stocks by groups of armed workers meant by early September Paris was suffering acute food shortages. However, the biggest challenge was servicing the huge public debt inherited from the former regime, which continued to expand due to the war. The state initially financed this by selling confiscated property, but this was only a short-term solution. Since few were willing to buy assets that might be repossessed, fiscal stability could only be achieved by continuing the war until French counter-revolutionaries had been defeated. As internal and external threats to the Republic increased, the position worsened; dealing with this by printing paper money or assignats devalued the currency and those most impacted were the urban poor, or sans-culottes.[119]
On 10 October, the Convention recognised the Committee of Public Safety as the supreme Revolutionary Government, and suspended the Constitution until peace was achieved.[120] In mid-October, former queen Marie Antoinette was found guilty of a long list of crimes and guillotined; two weeks later, the Girondist leaders arrested in June were also executed, along with Philippe Égalité. Revolutionary terror was not confined to Paris; after the recapture of Lyons, over 2,000 were killed, one of the last being Jean Ripet, the public executioner, whose hard work did not save him.[121]
At Cholet on 17 October, the Republican army won a decisive victory over the Vendée rebels, with the remnants escaping over into Brittany. Another defeat at Le Mans on 23 December ended the rebellion as a major threat, although the insurgency continued until 1796. The brutal repression that followed has been debated by French historians since the mid-19th century, with some calling it a genocide.[122] Between November 1793 to February 1794, over 4,000 were drowned in the Loire at Nantes under the supervision of Jean-Baptiste Carrier, with historian Reynald Secher claiming as many as 117,000 died between 1793 to 1796. Although those numbers have been challenged, François Furet concluded it "not only revealed massacre and destruction on an unprecedented scale, but a zeal so violent that it has bestowed as its legacy much of the region's identity."[123] [a]
At its peak, the slightest hint of counter-revolutionary thoughts could place one under suspicion, while even its supporters were not immune. Under the pressure of events, splits appeared within the Montagnard faction, with violent disagreements between radical Hébertists and moderates led by Danton.[b] The Robespierre viewed their dispute as de-stabilising the regime, while as a Deist he objected to the anti-religious policies advocated by the atheist Hébert; he was arrested and executed on 24 March with 19 of his colleagues, including Carrier.[127] To retain the loyalty of the remaining Hébertists, Danton was arrested, and executed on 5 April along with Camille Desmoulins, after a show trial that arguably did more damage to Robespierre than any other act in this period.[128]
The Law of 22 Prairial, or 10 June, denied "enemies of the people" the right to defend themselves, while those arrested in the provinces were now sent to Paris for judgement; from March to July, executions in Paris increased from five to twenty-six a day.[129] Many Jacobins ridiculed the festival of the Cult of the Supreme Being on 8 June, a lavish and expensive ceremony led by Robespierre, who was also accused of circulating claims he was a second Messiah. The relaxation of price controls and rampant inflation caused increasing unrest among the sans-culottes, while the improved military situation reduced fears the Republic was in danger. Many feared their own survival depended on his removal; during a meeting on 29 June, three members of the Committee of Public Safety called him a dictator in his face.[130]
Robespierre responded by not attending sessions, allowing his opponents to build a coalition against him. In a speech made to the Convention on 26 July, he claimed certain members were conspiring against the Republic, an almost certain death sentence if confirmed; when he refused to give names, the session broke up in confusion. That evening he made the same speech at the Jacobins club, where it was greeted with huge applause and demands for execution of the 'traitors'. It was clear if his opponents did not act, he would; in the Convention next day, Robespierre and his allies were shouted down. His voice failed when he tried to speak, a deputy crying "The blood of Danton chokes him!"[131]
The Convention authorised his arrest; after a failed suicide attempt, he was executed on 28 July with 19 colleagues, including Louis Antoine de Saint-Just and Georges Couthon, followed by 83 members of the Commune.[132] The Law of 22 Prairial was repealed, while any surviving Girondists expelled in June 1793 were reinstated as Convention deputies; in November the Jacobin Club was closed and banned.[133]
There are various interpretations of the Terror; Marxist historian Albert Soboul saw it as necessary to defend the Revolution from external and internal threats. Others, including François Furet, argued these had little to do with the Terror, and its violence was a product of the intense ideological commitment of the revolutionaries, whose Utopian goals required exterminating any opposition.[134] A middle position suggests the Terror was not inherent to the ideology of the Revolution, but the product of a series of complex internal events, combined with a genuine foreign threat.[135] Scholars have also argued its violence served a sacrificial function.[136]
The Thermidorean reaction
Although the victors of Thermidor had asserted their control over the Commune by executing their leaders, some of the leading "Terrorists" retained their positions. They included Paul Barras, later a member of the Directory, Joseph Fouché, director of the killings in Lyon, who served as Minister of Police under the Directory, the Consulate and Empire. Others were exiled or prosecuted, a process that took several months; it was only in November that the Convention felt secure enough to close the Jacobins club.[137]
The fall of Robespierre did not yet end the bloodshed; Southern France saw a wave of revenge killings, directed against alleged Jacobins, Republican officials and Protestants. Food shortages arising from a poor 1794 harvest were exacerbated in Northern France by the need to supply the army in Flanders, while the harsh winter made it difficult to transport goods around the country. By April 1795, the assignat was worth only 8% of its face value; in desperation, the sans culottes rose again.[138] They were quickly dispersed and the main impact was another round of arrests, while Jacobin prisoners in Lyon were summarily executed.[139]
In order to end the Chouannerie in western France and pacify the Vendee, the December 1794 Treaty of La Jaunaye allowed freedom of worship and the return of Catholic priests who had refused to swear loyalty to the Republic.[140] This went some way towards ending unrest in the regions, although in October 1795 the government reinstated the requirement for all priests to take an oath of loyalty. This was helped by military success; in January 1795, French forces helped the Dutch Patriots movement set up the Batavian Republic, securing their northern border.[141] For the first time, the survival of the Republic seemed assured; in April 1795, the Peace of Basel ended the war with Prussia, followed by Spain.[142]
The Directory; 1795–1799
The convention on 22 August 1795 approved the new "Constitution of the Year III". A French plebiscite ratified the document, with about 1,057,000 votes for the constitution and 49,000 against.[143] The results of the voting were announced on 23 September 1795, and the new constitution took effect on 27 September 1795.[143] The new constitution created the Directoire (English: Directory) with a bicameral legislature.
The first chamber was called the 'Council of 500' initiating the laws, the second the 'Council of Elders' reviewing and approving or not the passed laws. Each year, one-third of the chambers was to be renewed. The executive power was in the hands of the five members (directors) of the Directory with a five-year mandate.[144]
The early directors did not much understand the nation they were governing; they especially had an innate inability to see Catholicism as anything else than counter-revolutionary and royalist. Local administrators had a better sense of people's priorities, and one of them wrote to the minister of the interior: "Give back the crosses, the church bells, the Sundays, and everyone will cry: 'vive la République!'"[144]
The Directory denounced the arbitrary executions of the Reign of Terror, but itself engaged in large scale illegal repressions, as well as large-scale massacres of civilians in the Vendee uprising. The economy continued in bad condition, with the poor especially hurt by the high cost of food.
State finances were in total disarray; the government could only cover its expenses through the plunder and the tribute of foreign countries. If peace was 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. Barras and Rewbell were notoriously corrupt themselves and screened corruption in others. The patronage of the directors was ill-bestowed, and the general maladministration heightened their unpopularity.[145]
The constitutional party in the legislature desired toleration of the nonjuring clergy, the repeal of the laws against the relatives of the émigrés, and some merciful discrimination towards the émigrés themselves. The directors baffled all such endeavours. On the other hand, the proto-anarchist/communist conspiracy of Babeuf was easily quelled. Little was done to improve the finances, and the assignats continued to fall in value until each note was worth less than the paper it was printed on; debtors easily paid off their debts.[146] A series of financial reforms started by the Directory finally took effect after it fell from power.[citation needed]
Evaluation
Although committed to Republicanism, the Directory distrusted democracy.[citation needed] Historians have seldom praised the Directory; it was a government of self-interest rather than virtue, thus losing any claim on idealism. It never had a strong base of popular support; when elections were held, most of its candidates were defeated. Its achievements were minor.[147][148] Brown stresses the turn towards dictatorship and the failure of liberal democracy under the Directory, blaming it on, "chronic violence, ambivalent forms of justice, and repeated recourse to heavy-handed repression."[149]
The election system was complex and designed to insulate the government from grass roots democracy. The parliament consisted of two houses: the Conseil des Cinq-Cents (Council of the Five Hundred) with 500 representatives, and the Conseil des Anciens (Council of Elders) with 250 senators. Executive power went to five "directors," named annually by the Conseil des Anciens from a list submitted by the Conseil des Cinq-Cents. The universal male suffrage of 1793 was replaced by male census suffrage based on property. The voters had only a limited choice because the electoral rules required two-thirds of the seats go to members of the old Convention, no matter how few popular votes they received.[150]
Citizens of the war-weary nation wanted stability, peace, and an end to conditions that at times bordered on chaos. Nevertheless, those on the right who wished to restore the monarchy by putting Louis XVIII on the throne, and those on the left who would have renewed the Reign of Terror, tried but failed to overthrow the Directory. The earlier atrocities had made confidence or goodwill between parties impossible.[151] The Directory régime met opposition from Jacobins on the left and royalists on the right (the latter were secretly subsidised by the British government). The army suppressed riots and counter-revolutionary activities. In this way the army and in particular Napoleon gained total power.[152]
Coups d'état
Parliamentary elections in the spring of 1797, for one-third of the seats in Parliament, resulted in considerable gains for the royalists,[153] who seemed poised to take control of the Directory in the next elections. This frightened the republican directors and they reacted, in the Coup of 18 Fructidor V (4 September 1797), by purging all the winners banishing 57 leaders to certain death in Guiana, removing two supposedly pro-royalist directors, and closing 42 newspapers.
The new, 'corrected' government, still strongly convinced that Catholicism and royalism were equally dangerous to the Republic, started a fresh campaign to promote the Republican calendar (officially introduced in 1792), with its ten-day week, and tried to hallow the tenth day, décadi, as substitute for the Christian Sunday. Not only citizens opposed and even mocked such decrees, also local government officials refused to enforce such laws.[153]
France was still waging wars, in 1798 in Egypt, Switzerland, Rome, Ireland, Belgium and against the US, in 1799 in Baden-Württemberg. When the elections of 1798 were again carried by the opposition, the Directory used the army to imprison and exile the opposition leaders and close their newspapers.[citation needed] Increasingly it depended on the Army in foreign and domestic affairs, as well as finance.
In 1799, when the French armies abroad experienced some setbacks, the newly chosen director Sieyes considered a new overhaul necessary for the Directory's form of government because in his opinion it needed a stronger executive. Together with successful general Napoleon Bonaparte who had just returned to France, Sieyes began preparing another coup d'état, which took place on 9–10 November 1799 (18–19 Brumaire VIII), replacing the five directors now with three "consuls": Napoleon, Sieyes, and Roger Ducos.[153] That coup some historians consider the closing of the specifically republican phase of the French Revolution.[154]
Exporting the Revolution
The Army at first was quite successful. It conquered Belgium and turned it into a province of France; conquered the Netherlands and made it a puppet state; and conquered Switzerland and most of Italy, setting up a series of puppet states. The result was glory for France and an infusion of much needed money from the conquered lands, which also provided direct support to the French Army. However, the enemies of France, led by Britain and funded by the inexhaustible British Treasury, formed a Second Coalition in 1799 (with Britain joined by Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Austria). The allies scored a series of victories that rolled back French successes, retaking Italy, Switzerland and the Netherlands and ending the flow of payments from the conquered areas to France. The treasury was empty. Despite his publicity claiming many glorious victories, Napoleon's army was trapped in Egypt after the British sank the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile. Napoleon escaped by himself, returned to Paris and overthrew the Directory in November 1799.[155][156]
Napoleon conquered most of Italy in the name of the French Revolution in 1797–99. He consolidated old units and split up Austria's holdings. He set up a series of new republics, complete with new codes of law and abolition of old feudal privileges. Napoleon's Cisalpine Republic was centred on Milan. Genoa the city became a republic while its hinterland became the Ligurian Republic. The Roman Republic was formed out of the papal holdings and the pope was sent to France. The Neapolitan Republic was formed around Naples, but it lasted only five months before the enemy forces of the Coalition recaptured it. In 1805 Napoleon formed the Kingdom of Italy, with himself as king and his stepson as viceroy. In addition, France turned the Netherlands into the Batavian Republic, and Switzerland into the Helvetic Republic. All these new countries were satellites of France and had to pay large subsidies to Paris, as well as provide military support for Napoleon's wars. Their political and administrative systems were modernised, the metric system introduced, and trade barriers reduced. Jewish ghettos were abolished. Belgium and Piedmont became integral parts of France.[157]
Most of the new nations were abolished and returned to prewar owners in 1814. However, Artz emphasises the benefits the Italians gained from the French Revolution:
For nearly two decades the Italians had the excellent codes of law, a fair system of taxation, a better economic situation, and more religious and intellectual toleration than they had known for centuries... Everywhere old physical, economic, and intellectual barriers had been thrown down and the Italians had begun to be aware of a common nationality.[158]
Media and symbolism
Newspapers
In the Old regime there were a small number of heavily censored newspapers that needed a royal licence to operate. Newspapers and pamphlets played a central role in stimulating and defining the Revolution. The meetings of the Estates-General in 1789 created an enormous demand for news, and over 130 newspapers appeared by the end of the year. Among the most significant of these newspapers in 1789 were Marat's L'Ami du peuple and Elysée Loustallot's Revolutions de Paris. The next decade saw 2,000 newspapers founded, with 500 in Paris alone. Most lasted only a matter of weeks. Together they became the main communication medium, combined with the very large pamphlet literature.[159] Newspapers were read aloud in taverns and clubs, and circulated hand to hand. The press saw its lofty role to be the advancement of civic republicanism based on public service, and downplayed the liberal, individualistic goal of making a profit.[160][161][162][163] By 1793 the radicals were most active but at the start the royalists flooded the country with their press the "Ami du Roi" (Friends of the King) until they were suppressed.[164] Napoleon only allowed four newspapers, all under tight control.
Symbolism
Symbolism was a device to distinguish the main features of the Revolution and ensure public identification and support. In order to effectively illustrate the differences between the new Republic and the old regime, the leaders needed to implement a new set of symbols to be celebrated instead of the old religious and monarchical symbolism. To this end, symbols were borrowed from historic cultures and redefined, while those of the old regime were either destroyed or reattributed acceptable characteristics. These revised symbols were used to instil in the public a new sense of tradition and reverence for the Enlightenment and the Republic.[165]
La Marseillaise
"La Marseillaise" (French pronunciation: [la maʁsɛjɛːz]) became the national anthem of France. The song was written and composed in 1792 by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, and was originally titled "Chant de guerre pour l'Armée du Rhin". The French National Convention adopted it as the First Republic's anthem in 1795. It acquired its nickname after being sung in Paris by volunteers from Marseille marching on the capital.
The song is the first example of the "European march" anthemic style. The anthem's evocative melody and lyrics have led to its widespread use as a song of revolution and its incorporation into many pieces of classical and popular music. Cerulo (1993) says:[166]
[T]he design of "La Marseillaise" is credited to General Strasburg of France, who is said to have directed de Lisle, the composer of the anthem, to 'produce one of those hymns which conveys to the soul of the people the enthusiasm which it (the music) suggests.'
Guillotine
Hanson notes, "The guillotine stands as the principal symbol of the Terror in the French Revolution."[167] Invented by a physician during the Revolution as a quicker, more efficient and more distinctive form of execution, the guillotine became a part of popular culture and historic memory. It was celebrated on the left as the people's avenger and cursed as the symbol of the Reign of Terror by the right.[168] Its operation became a popular entertainment that attracted great crowds of spectators. Vendors sold programmes listing the names of those scheduled to die. Many people came day after day and vied for the best locations from which to observe the proceedings; knitting women (tricoteuses) formed a cadre of hardcore regulars, inciting the crowd. Parents often brought their children. By the end of the Terror, the crowds had thinned drastically. Repetition had staled even this most grisly of entertainments, and audiences grew bored.[169]
What it is that horrifies people changes over time. Doyle comments:
- Even the unique horror of the guillotine has been dwarfed by the gas chambers of the Holocaust, the organized brutality of the gulag, the mass intimidation of Mao's cultural revolution, or the killing fields of Cambodia.[170]
Tricolore cockade
Cockades were widely worn by revolutionaries beginning in 1789. They now pinned the blue-and-red cockade of Paris onto the white cockade of the Ancien Régime. Camille Desmoulins asked his followers to wear green cockades on 12 July 1789. The Paris militia, formed on 13 July, adopted a blue and red cockade. Blue and red are the traditional colours of Paris, and they are used on the city's coat of arms. Cockades with various colour schemes were used during the storming of the Bastille on 14 July.[171]
Fasces
Fasces are Roman in origin and suggest Roman Republicanism. Fasces are a bundle of birch rods containing an axe. The French Republic continued this Roman symbol to represent state power, justice, and unity.[165]
Liberty cap
The Liberty cap, also known as the Phrygian cap, or pileus, is a brimless, felt cap that is conical in shape with the tip pulled forward. It reflects Roman republicanism and liberty, alluding to the Roman ritual of manumission of slaves, in which a freed slave receives the bonnet as a symbol of his newfound liberty.[172]
Role of women
Historians since the late 20th century have debated how women shared in the French Revolution and what long-term impact it had on French women. Women had no political rights in pre-Revolutionary France; they were considered "passive" citizens; forced to rely on men to determine what was best for them. That changed dramatically in theory as there seemingly were great advances in feminism. Feminism emerged in Paris as part of a broad demand for social and political reform. The women demanded equality for women and then moved on to a demand for the end of male domination. Their chief vehicle for agitation were pamphlets and women's clubs; for example, a small group called the Cercle Social (Social Circle) campaigned for women's rights, noting that "the laws favor men at the expense of women, because everywhere power is in your hands."[173] However, in October 1793, the country's all-male legislative body voted to ban all women's clubs. The movement was crushed. Devance explains the decision in terms of the emphasis on masculinity in a wartime situation, Marie Antoinette's bad reputation for feminine interference in state affairs, and traditional male supremacy.[174] A decade later the Napoleonic Code confirmed and perpetuated women's second-class status.[175]
When the Revolution opened, groups of women acted forcefully, making use of the volatile political climate. Women forced their way into the political sphere. They swore oaths of loyalty, "solemn declarations of patriotic allegiance, [and] affirmations of the political responsibilities of citizenship." De Corday d'Armont is a prime example of such a woman; engaged in the revolutionary political faction of the Girondins, she assassinated the Jacobin leader, Marat. Throughout the Revolution, other women such as Pauline Léon and her Society of Revolutionary Republican Women supported the radical Jacobins, staged demonstrations in the National Assembly and participated in the riots, often using armed force.[176]
The March to Versailles is but one example of feminist militant activism during the French Revolution. While largely left out of the thrust for increasing rights of citizens, as the question was left indeterminate in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen,[177] activists such as Pauline Léon and Théroigne de Méricourt agitated for full citizenship for women.[178] Women were, nonetheless, "denied political rights of 'active citizenship' (1791) and democratic citizenship (1793)."[177]
On 20 June 1792 a number of armed women took part in a procession that "passed through the halls of the Legislative Assembly, into the Tuileries Gardens, and then through the King's residence."[179] Militant women also assumed a special role in the funeral of Marat, following his murder on 13 July 1793. As part of the funeral procession, they carried the bathtub in which Marat had been murdered (by a counter-revolutionary woman) as well as a shirt stained with Marat's blood.[180] On 20 May 1793 women were at the fore of a crowd that demanded "bread and the Constitution of 1793." When their cries went unnoticed, the women went on a rampage, "sacking shops, seizing grain and kidnapping officials."[181]
The Society of Revolutionary Republican Women, a militant group on the far left, demanded a law in 1793 that would compel all women to wear the tricolour cockade to demonstrate their loyalty to the Republic. They also demanded vigorous price controls to keep bread – the major food of the poor people – from becoming too expensive. After the Convention passage law in September 1793, the Revolutionary Republican Women demanded vigorous enforcement, but were counted by market women, former servants, and religious women who adamantly opposed price controls (which would drive them out of business ) and resented attacks on the aristocracy and on religion. Fist fights broke out in the streets between the two factions of women.
Meanwhile, the men who controlled the Jacobins rejected the Revolutionary Republican Women as dangerous rabble-rousers. At this point the Jacobins controlled the government; they dissolved the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women, and decreed that all women's clubs and associations were illegal. They sternly reminded women to stay home and tend to their families by leaving public affairs to the men. Organised women were permanently shut out of the French Revolution after 30 October 1793.[182]
Prominent women
Olympe de Gouges wrote a number of plays, short stories, and novels. Her publications emphasised that women and men are different, but this shouldn't stop them from equality under the law. In her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen she insisted that women deserved rights, especially in areas concerning them directly, such as divorce and recognition of illegitimate children.[183]
Madame Roland (a.k.a. Manon or Marie Roland) was another important female activist. Her political focus was not specifically on women or their liberation. She focused on other aspects of the government, but was a feminist by virtue of the fact that she was a woman working to influence the world. Her personal letters to leaders of the Revolution influenced policy; in addition, she often hosted political gatherings of the Brissotins, a political group which allowed women to join. As she was led to the scaffold, Madame Roland shouted "O liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name!"[184]
Most of these activists were punished for their actions. Many of the women of the Revolution were even publicly executed for "conspiring against the unity and the indivisibility of the Republic".[185]
Counter-revolutionary women
A major aspect of the French Revolution was the dechristianisation movement, a movement strongly rejected by many devout people. Especially for women living in rural areas of France, the closing of the churches meant a loss of normalcy.[186]
When these revolutionary changes to the Church were implemented, it sparked a counter-revolutionary movement among women. Although some of these women embraced the political and social amendments of the Revolution, they opposed the dissolution of the Catholic Church and the formation of revolutionary cults like the Cult of the Supreme Being.[187] As Olwen Hufton argues, these women began to see themselves as the "defenders of faith".[188] They took it upon themselves to protect the Church from what they saw as a heretical change to their faith, enforced by revolutionaries.
Counter-revolutionary women resisted what they saw as the intrusion of the state into their lives.[189] Economically, many peasant women refused to sell their goods for assignats because this form of currency was unstable and was backed by the sale of confiscated Church property. By far the most important issue to counter-revolutionary women was the passage and the enforcement of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in 1790. In response to this measure, women in many areas began circulating anti-oath pamphlets and refused to attend masses held by priests who had sworn oaths of loyalty to the Republic. These women continued to adhere to traditional practices such as Christian burials and naming their children after saints in spite of revolutionary decrees to the contrary.[190]
Economic policies
The French Revolution abolished many of the constraints on the economy that had slowed growth during the ancien regime. It abolished tithes owed to local churches as well as feudal dues owed to local landlords. The result hurt the tenants, who paid both higher rents and higher taxes.[191] It nationalised all church lands, as well as lands belonging to royalist enemies who went into exile. It planned to use these seized lands to finance the government by issuing assignats. It abolished the guild system as a worthless remnant of feudalism.[192] It also abolished the highly inefficient system of tax farming, whereby private individuals would collect taxes for a hefty fee. The government seized the foundations that had been set up (starting in the 13th century) to provide an annual stream of revenue for hospitals, poor relief, and education. The state sold the lands but typically local authorities did not replace the funding and so most of the nation's charitable and school systems were massively disrupted.[193]
The economy did poorly in 1790–96 as industrial and agricultural output dropped, foreign trade plunged, and prices soared. The government decided not to repudiate the old debts. Instead it issued more and more paper money (called "assignat") that supposedly were grounded seized lands. The result was escalating inflation. The government imposed price controls and persecuted speculators and traders in the black market. People increasingly refused to pay taxes as the annual government deficit increased from 10% of gross national product in 1789 to 64% in 1793. By 1795, after the bad harvest of 1794 and the removal of price controls, inflation had reached a level of 3500%. The assignats were withdrawn in 1796 but the replacements also fuelled inflation. The inflation was finally ended by Napoleon in 1803 with the franc as the new currency.[194]
Napoleon after 1799 paid for his expensive wars by multiple means, starting with the modernisation of the rickety financial system.[195] He conscripted soldiers at low wages, raised taxes, placed large-scale loans, sold lands formerly owned by the Catholic Church, sold Louisiana to the United States, plundered conquered areas and seized food supplies, and levied requisitions on countries he controlled, such as Italy.[196]
Long-term impact
The French Revolution had a major impact on Europe and the New World, decisively changing the course of human history.[197] It ended feudalism and created the path for future advances in broadly defined individual freedoms.[12] [8] [13] Its impact on French nationalism was profound, while also stimulating nationalist movements throughout Europe.[198] The influence was great in the hundreds of small German states and elsewhere, where it was either inspired by the French example or in reaction against it.[199]
France
The changes in France were enormous; some were widely accepted and others were bitterly contested into the late 20th century.[200] Before the Revolution, the people had little power or voice. The kings had so thoroughly centralised the system that most nobles spent their time at Versailles, and thus played only a small direct role in their home districts. Thompson says that the kings had "ruled by virtue of their personal wealth, their patronage of the nobility, their disposal of ecclesiastical offices, their provincial governors (intendants) their control over the judges and magistrates, and their command of the Army."[201]
After the first year of revolution, the power of the king had been stripped away, he was left a mere figurehead, the nobility had lost all their titles and most of their land, the Church lost its monasteries and farmlands, bishops, judges and magistrates were elected by the people, and the army was almost helpless, with military power in the hands of the new revolutionary National Guard. The central elements of 1789 were the slogan "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity" and "The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen", which Lefebvre calls "the incarnation of the Revolution as a whole."[202]
The long-term impact on France was profound, shaping politics, society, religion and ideas, and polarising politics for more than a century. Historian François Aulard writes:
"From the social point of view, the Revolution consisted in the suppression of what was called the feudal system, in the emancipation of the individual, in greater division of landed property, the abolition of the privileges of noble birth, the establishment of equality, the simplification of life.... The French Revolution differed from other revolutions in being not merely national, for it aimed at benefiting all humanity."[203]
Religion and charity
The most heated controversy was over the status of the Catholic Church.[204] From a dominant position in 1788, it was almost destroyed in less than a decade, its priests and nuns turned out, its leaders dead or in exile, its property controlled by its enemies, and a strong effort underway to remove all influence of Christian religiosity, such as Sundays, holy days, saints, prayers, rituals and ceremonies. The movement to dechristianise France not only failed but aroused a furious reaction among the pious.[205][206] Napoleon's Concordat was a compromise that restored some of the Catholic Church's traditional roles but not its power, its lands or its monasteries. Priests and bishops were given salaries as part of a department of government controlled by Paris, not Rome. Protestants and Jews gained equal rights.[207] Battles over the role of religion in the public sphere, and closely related issues such as church-controlled schools, that were opened by the Revolution have never seen closure. They raged into the 20th century. By the 21st century, angry debates exploded over the presence of any Muslim religious symbols in schools, such as the headscarves for which Muslim girls could be expelled. J. Christopher Soper and Joel S. Fetzer explicitly link the conflict over religious symbols in public to the French Revolution, when the target was Catholic rituals and symbols.[208]
The revolutionary government seized the charitable foundations that had been set up (starting in the 13th century) to provide an annual stream of revenue for hospitals, poor relief, and education. The state sold the lands but typically local authorities did not replace the funding and so most of the nation's charitable and school systems were massively disrupted.[193]
In the ancien regime, new opportunities for nuns as charitable practitioners were created by devout nobles on their own estates. The nuns provided comprehensive care for the sick poor on their patrons' estates, not only acting as nurses, but taking on expanded roles as physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries. During the Revolution, most of the orders of nuns were shut down and there was no organised nursing care to replace them.[209] However, the demand for their nursing services remained strong, and after 1800 the sisters reappeared and resumed their work in hospitals and on rural estates. They were tolerated by officials because they had widespread support and were the link between elite male physicians and distrustful peasants who needed help.[210]
Economics
Two thirds of France was employed in agriculture, which was transformed by the Revolution. With the breakup of large estates controlled by the Church and the nobility and worked by hired hands, rural France became more a land of small independent farms. Harvest taxes were ended, such as the tithe and seigneurial dues, much to the relief of the peasants. Primogeniture was ended both for nobles and peasants, thereby weakening the family patriarch. Because all the children had a share in the family's property, there was a declining birth rate.[211][212] Cobban says the revolution bequeathed to the nation "a ruling class of landowners."[213]
In the cities, entrepreneurship on a small scale flourished, as restrictive monopolies, privileges, barriers, rules, taxes and guilds gave way. However, the British blockade virtually ended overseas and colonial trade, hurting the port cities and their supply chains. Overall, the Revolution did not greatly change the French business system, and probably helped freeze in place the horizons of the small business owner. The typical businessman owned a small store, mill or shop, with family help and a few paid employees; large-scale industry was less common than in other industrialising nations.[214]
A 2017 National Bureau of Economic Research paper found that the emigration of more than 100,000 individuals (predominantly supporters of the Old Regime) during the Revolution had a significant negative impact on income per capita in the 19th century (due to the fragmentation of agricultural holdings) but became positive in the second half of the 20th century onward (because it facilitated the rise in human capital investments).[215] Another 2017 paper found that the redistribution of land had a positive impact on agricultural productivity, but that these gains gradually declined over the course of the 19th century.[216][217]
Constitutionalism
The Revolution meant an end to arbitrary royal rule and held out the promise of rule by law under a constitutional order, but it did not rule out a monarch. Napoleon as emperor set up a constitutional system (although he remained in full control), and the restored Bourbons were forced to go along with one. After the abdication of Napoleon III in 1871, the monarchists probably had a voting majority, but they were so factionalised they could not agree on who should be king, and instead the French Third Republic was launched with a deep commitment to upholding the ideals of the Revolution.[218][219] The conservative Catholic enemies of the Revolution came to power in Vichy France (1940–44), and tried with little success to undo its heritage, but they kept it a republic. Vichy denied the principle of equality and tried to replace the Revolutionary watchwords "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" with "Work, Family, and Fatherland." However, there were no efforts by the Bourbons, Vichy or anyone else to restore the privileges that had been stripped away from the nobility in 1789. France permanently became a society of equals under the law.[220]
Communism
The Jacobin cause was picked up by Marxists in the mid-19th century and became an element of communist thought around the world. In the Soviet Union, "Gracchus" Babeuf was regarded as a hero.[221]
Europe, outside France
Economic historians Dan Bogart, Mauricio Drelichman, Oscar Gelderblom, and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal described codified law as the French Revolution's "most significant export." They wrote, "While restoration returned most of their power to the absolute monarchs who had been deposed by Napoleon, only the most recalcitrant ones, such as Ferdinand VII of Spain, went to the trouble of completely reversing the legal innovations brought on by the French."[222] They also note that the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars caused England, Spain, Prussia and the Dutch Republic to centralize their fiscal systems to an unprecedented extent in order to finance the military campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars.[222]
According to Daron Acemoglu, Davide Cantoni, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson the French Revolution had long-term effects in Europe. They suggest that "areas that were occupied by the French and that underwent radical institutional reform experienced more rapid urbanization and economic growth, especially after 1850. There is no evidence of a negative effect of French invasion."[223]
A 2016 study in the European Economic Review found that the areas of Germany that were occupied by France in the 19th century and in which the Code Napoleon was applied have higher levels of trust and cooperation today.[224]
Britain
On 16 July 1789, two days after the Storming of the Bastille, John Frederick Sackville, serving as ambassador to France, reported to Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Francis Osborne, 5th Duke of Leeds, "Thus, my Lord, the greatest revolution that we know anything of has been effected with, comparatively speaking – if the magnitude of the event is considered – the loss of very few lives. From this moment we may consider France as a free country, the King a very limited monarch, and the nobility as reduced to a level with the rest of the nation.[225]" Yet Britain saw minority support while the majority, and especially the among aristocracy, strongly opposed the French Revolution. Britain led and funded the series of coalitions that fought France from 1793 to 1815, and then restored the Bourbons.
Philosophically and politically, Britain was in debate over the rights and wrongs of revolution, in the abstract and in practicalities. The Revolution Controversy was a "pamphlet war" set off by the publication of A Discourse on the Love of Our Country, a speech given by Richard Price to the Revolution Society on 4 November 1789, supporting the French Revolution (as he had the American Revolution), and saying that patriotism actually centers around loving the people and principles of a nation, not its ruling class. Edmund Burke responded in November 1790 with his own pamphlet, Reflections on the Revolution in France, attacking the French Revolution as a threat to the aristocracy of all countries.[226][227] William Coxe opposed Price's premise that one's country is principles and people, not the State itself.[228]
Conversely, two seminal political pieces of political history were written in Price's favor, supporting the general right of the French people to replace their State. One of the first of these "pamphlets" into print was A Vindication of the Rights of Men by Mary Wollstonecraft (better known for her later treatise, sometimes described as the first feminist text, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman); Wollstonecraft's title was echoed by Thomas Paine's Rights of Man, published a few months later. In 1792 Christopher Wyvill published Defence of Dr. Price and the Reformers of England, a plea for reform and moderation.[229]
This exchange of ideas has been described as "one of the great political debates in British history".[230] Even in France, there was a varying degree of agreement during this debate, English participants generally opposing the violent means that the Revolution bent itself to for its ends.[231]
In Ireland, the effect was to transform what had been an attempt by Protestant settlers to gain some autonomy into a mass movement led by the Society of United Irishmen involving Catholics and Protestants. It stimulated the demand for further reform throughout Ireland, especially in Ulster. The upshot was a revolt in 1798, led by Wolfe Tone, that was crushed by Britain.[232]
Germany
German reaction to the Revolution swung from favourable to antagonistic. At first it brought liberal and democratic ideas, the end of guilds, serfdom and the Jewish ghetto. It brought economic freedoms and agrarian and legal reform. Above all the antagonism helped stimulate and shape German nationalism.[233]
Switzerland
The French invaded Switzerland and turned it into an ally known as the "Helvetic Republic" (1798–1803). The interference with localism and traditional liberties was deeply resented, although some modernising reforms took place.[234][235]
Belgium
The region of modern-day Belgium was divided between two polities: the Austrian Netherlands and Prince-Bishopric of Liège. Both territories experienced revolutions in 1789. In the Austrian Netherlands, the Brabant Revolution succeeded in expelling Austrian forces and established the new United Belgian States. The Liège Revolution expelled the tyrannical Prince-Bishop and installed a republic. Both failed to attract international support. By December 1790, the Brabant revolution had been crushed and Liège was subdued the following year.
During the Revolutionary Wars, the French invaded and occupied the region between 1794 and 1814, a time known as the French period. The new government enforced new reforms, incorporating the region into France itself. New rulers were sent in by Paris. Belgian men were drafted into the French wars and heavily taxed. Nearly everyone was Catholic, but the Church was repressed. Resistance was strong in every sector, as Belgian nationalism emerged to oppose French rule. The French legal system, however, was adopted, with its equal legal rights, and abolition of class distinctions. Belgium now had a government bureaucracy selected by merit.[236]
Antwerp regained access to the sea and grew quickly as a major port and business centre. France promoted commerce and capitalism, paving the way for the ascent of the bourgeoisie and the rapid growth of manufacturing and mining. In economics, therefore, the nobility declined while the middle class Belgian entrepreneurs flourished because of their inclusion in a large market, paving the way for Belgium's leadership role after 1815 in the Industrial Revolution on the Continent.[237][238]
The Kingdom of Denmark adopted liberalising reforms in line with those of the French Revolution, with no direct contact. Reform was gradual and the regime itself carried out agrarian reforms that had the effect of weakening absolutism by creating a class of independent peasant freeholders. Much of the initiative came from well-organised liberals who directed political change in the first half of the 19th century.[239]
North America
Canada
The press in the colony of Quebec initially viewed the events of the Revolution positively.[240] Press coverage in Quebec on the Revolution was reliant, and reflective of public opinion in London, with the colony's press reliant on newspapers and reprints from journals from the British Isles.[241] The early positive reception of the French Revolution had made it politically difficult to justify withholding electoral institutions from the colony to both the British and Quebec public; with the British Home Secretary William Grenville remarking how it was hardly possible to "maintain with success," the denial "to so large a body of British Subjects, the benefits of the British Constitution".[242] Governmental reforms introduced in the Constitutional Act 1791 split Quebec into two separate colonies, Lower Canada, and Upper Canada; and introduced electoral institutions to the two colonies.[242]
French migration to the Canadas was decelerated significantly during, and after the French Revolution; with only a small number of artisans, professionals, and religious emigres from France permitted to settle in the Canadas during that period.[243] Most of these migrants moved to Montreal or Quebec City, although French nobleman Joseph-Geneviève de Puisaye also led a small group of French royalists to settle lands north of York (present day Toronto).[243] The influx of religious migrants from France reinvigorated the Roman Catholic Church in the Canadas, with the refectory priests who moved to the colonies being responsible for the establishment of a number of parishes throughout the Canadas.[243]
United States
The French Revolution deeply polarised American politics, and this polarisation led to the creation of the First Party System. In 1793, as war broke out in Europe, the Republican Party led by former American minister to France Thomas Jefferson favoured revolutionary France and pointed to the 1778 treaty that was still in effect. George Washington and his unanimous cabinet, including Jefferson, decided that the treaty did not bind the United States to enter the war. Washington proclaimed neutrality instead.[244] Under President John Adams, a Federalist, an undeclared naval war took place with France from 1798 until 1799, often called the "Quasi War". Jefferson became president in 1801, but was hostile to Napoleon as a dictator and emperor. However, the two entered negotiations over the Louisiana Territory and agreed to the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, an acquisition that substantially increased the size of the United States.
Historiography
The French Revolution has received enormous amounts of historical attention, both from the general public and from scholars and academics. The views of historians, in particular, have been characterised as falling along ideological lines, with disagreement over the significance and the major developments of the Revolution.[245] Alexis de Tocqueville argued that the Revolution was a manifestation of a more prosperous middle class becoming conscious of its social importance.[246]
Other thinkers, like the conservative Edmund Burke, maintained that the Revolution was the product of a few conspiratorial individuals who brainwashed the masses into subverting the old order – a claim rooted in the belief that the revolutionaries had no legitimate complaints.[247] Other historians, influenced by Marxist thinking, have emphasised the importance of the peasants and the urban workers in presenting the Revolution as a gigantic class struggle.[248] In general, scholarship on the French Revolution initially studied the political ideas and developments of the era, but it has gradually shifted towards social history that analyses the impact of the Revolution on individual lives.[249]
Historians until the late 20th century emphasised class conflicts from a largely Marxist perspective as the fundamental driving cause of the Revolution.[250] The central theme of this argument was that the Revolution emerged from the rising bourgeoisie, with support from the sans-culottes, who fought to destroy the aristocracy.[251] However, Western scholars largely abandoned Marxist interpretations in the 1990s. By the year 2000 many historians were saying that the field of the French Revolution was in intellectual disarray. The old model or paradigm focusing on class conflict has been discredited, and no new explanatory model had gained widespread support.[252][253] Nevertheless, as Spang has shown, there persists a very widespread agreement to the effect that the French Revolution was the watershed between the premodern and modern eras of Western history.[252]
Historians widely regard the Revolution as one of the most important events in history. It marks the end of the early modern period, which started around 1500 and is often seen as marking the "dawn of the modern era".[254] Within France itself, the Revolution permanently crippled the power of the aristocracy and drained the wealth of the Church, although the two institutions survived despite the damage they sustained. After the collapse of the First Empire in 1815, the French public lost the rights and privileges earned since the Revolution, but they remembered the participatory politics that characterised the period, with one historian commenting: "Thousands of men and even many women gained firsthand experience in the political arena: they talked, read, and listened in new ways; they voted; they joined new organisations; and they marched for their political goals. Revolution became a tradition, and republicanism an enduring option."[255]
Some historians argue that the French people underwent a fundamental transformation in self-identity, evidenced by the elimination of privileges and their replacement by rights as well as the growing decline in social deference that highlighted the principle of equality throughout the Revolution.[256] The Revolution represented the most significant and dramatic challenge to political absolutism up to that point in history and spread democratic ideals throughout Europe and ultimately the world.[257] Throughout the 19th century, the revolution was heavily analysed by economists and political scientists, who saw the class nature of the revolution as a fundamental aspect in understanding human social evolution itself. This, combined with the egalitarian values introduced by the revolution, gave rise to a classless and co-operative model for society called "socialism" which profoundly influenced future revolutions in France and around the world.
See also
- Age of Revolution
- Cordeliers
- Glossary of the French Revolution
- History of France
- List of people associated with the French Revolution
- List of political groups in the French Revolution
- Musée de la Révolution française
- Paris in the 18th Century
- Society of the Friends of Truth
- Timeline of the French Revolution
Notes
References
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- ^ Hanson, p. 189
- ^ Hanson, p. 191
- ^ Riemer, Neal; Simon, Douglas (1997). The New World of Politics: An Introduction to Political Science. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 106. ISBN 978-0-939693-41-2.
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- Greenwood, Frank Murray (1993). Legacies of Fear: Law and Politics in Quebec in the Era of the French Revolution. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-6974-6.
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- Hanson, Paul (2009). Contesting the French Revolution. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4051-6083-4.
- Hibbert, Christopher (1980). The Days of the French Revolution. Quill, William Morrow. ISBN 978-0-688-03704-8.
- Hufton, Olwen (1983). "Social Conflict and the Grain Supply in Eighteenth-Century France". The Journal of Interdisciplinary History. 14 (2). JSTOR 203707.
- Hunt, Lynn (1984). Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution. University of California Press.
- Hussenet, Jacques (2007). Détruisez la Vendée !" Regards croisés sur les victimes et destructions de la guerre de Vendée (in French). Centre vendéen de recherches historiques.
- Jordan, David (2004). The King's Trial: The French Revolution versus Louis XVI. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-23697-4.
- Jourdan, Annie (2007). "The "Alien Origins" of the French Revolution: American, Scottish, Genevan, and Dutch Influences". The Western Society for French History. 35 (2). University of Amsterdam.
- Kennedy, Emmet (1989). A Cultural History of the French Revolution. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300044263.
- Kennedy, Michael (2000). The Jacobin Clubs in the French Revolution: 1793–1795. Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-1571811868.
- Keitner, Chimene I (2007). The Paradoxes of Nationalism: The French Revolution and Its Meaning for Contemporary Nation Building. SUNY Press. ISBN 978-0-7914-6958-3.
- Lefebvre, Georges (1962). The French Revolution: From Its Origins to 1793. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-08598-4.
- Lefebvre, Georges (1963). The French Revolution: from 1793 to 1799. Vol. vol. II. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-02519-5.
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(help) - Lefebvre, Georges (1964). The Thermidorians & the Directory. Random House.
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- Schama, Simon (1977). Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands, 1780-1813. Harper Collins. ISBN 978-0002167017.
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(help) - Shusterman, Noah (2014). The French Revolution. Faith, Desire, and Politics. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-4156-6021-1.
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(help) - Tilly, Louise (1983). "Food Entitlement, Famine, and Conflict". The Journal of Interdisciplinary History. 14 (2). JSTOR 203708.
- Tombs, Robert; Tombs, Isabelle (2007). That Sweet Enemy: The French and the British from the Sun King to the Present. Random House. ISBN 978-1-4000-4024-7.
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Bibliography
Surveys and reference
- Andress, David, ed. The Oxford Handbook of the French Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2015). excerpt, 714 pp; 37 articles by experts
- Aulard, François-Alphonse. The French Revolution, a Political History, 1789–1804 (4 vol. 1910); famous classic; volume 1 1789–1792 online; Volume 2 1792–95 online
- Azurmendi, Joxe (1997). The democrats and the violent. Mirande's critique of the French Revolution. Philosophical viewpoint. (Original: Demokratak eta biolentoak, Donostia: Elkar ISBN 84-7917-744-6).
- Ballard, Richard. A New Dictionary of the French Revolution (2011) excerpt and text search
- Bosher, J.F. The French Revolution (1989) 365 pp
- Davies, Peter. The French Revolution: A Beginner's Guide (2009), 192 pp
- Gershoy, Leo. The French Revolution and Napoleon (1945) 585 pp
- Gershoy, Leo. The Era of the French Revolution, 1789–1799 (1957), brief summary with some primary sources
- Gottschalk, Louis R. The Era of the French Revolution (1929), cover 1780s to 1815
- Hanson, Paul R. The A to Z of the French Revolution (2013)
- Hanson, Paul R. Historical dictionary of the French Revolution (2015) online
- Jaurès, Jean (1903). A Socialist History of the French Revolution (2015 ed.). Pluto Press. ISBN 978-0-7453-3500-1.; inspiration for Soboul and Lefebvre, one of the most important accounts of the Revolution in terms of shaping perspectives;
- Jones, Colin. The Longman Companion to the French Revolution (1989)
- Jones, Colin. The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon (2002) excerpt and text search
- McPhee, Peter, ed. (2012). A Companion to the French Revolution. Wiley. ISBN 978-1-118-31641-2.
{{cite book}}
:|author=
has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - Madelin, Louis. The French Revolution (1916); textbook by leading French scholar. online
- Paxton, John. Companion to the French Revolution (1987), 234 pp; hundreds of short entries.
- Popkin, Jeremy D. A Short History of the French Revolution (5th ed. 2009) 176 pp
- Scott, Samuel F. and Barry Rothaus, eds. Historical Dictionary of the French Revolution, 1789–1799 (2 vol 1984), short essays by scholars vol. 1 online; vol 2 online
- Sutherland, D.M.G. France 1789–1815. Revolution and Counter-Revolution (2nd ed. 2003, 430 pp excerpts and online search from Amazon.com
European and Atlantic History
- Amann, Peter H., ed. The eighteenth-century revolution: French or Western? (Heath, 1963) readings from historians
- Brinton, Crane. A Decade of Revolution 1789–1799 (1934) the Revolution in European context
- Desan, Suzanne, et al. eds. The French Revolution in Global Perspective (2013)
- Fremont-Barnes, Gregory. ed. The Encyclopedia of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars: A Political, Social, and Military History (ABC-CLIO: 3 vol 2006)
- Goodwin, A., ed. The New Cambridge Modern History, Vol. 8: The American and French Revolutions, 1763–93 (1965), 764 pp
- Palmer, R.R. "The World Revolution of the West: 1763–1801," Political Science Quarterly (1954) 69#1 pp. 1–14 JSTOR 2145054
- Palmer, Robert R. The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760–1800. (2 vol 1959), highly influential comparative history; vol 1 online
- Rude, George F. and Harvey J. Kaye. Revolutionary Europe, 1783–1815 (2000), scholarly survey excerpt and text search
Politics and wars
- Andress, David. The terror: Civil war in the French revolution (2006).
- ed. Baker, Keith M. The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture (Oxford, 1987–94) vol 1: The Political Culture of the Old Regime, ed. K.M. Baker (1987); vol. 2: The Political Culture of the French Revolution, ed. C. Lucas (1988); vol. 3: The Transformation of Political Culture, 1789–1848, eds. F. Furet & M. Ozouf (1989); vol. 4: The Terror, ed. K.M. Baker (1994). excerpt and text search vol 4
- Blanning, T.C.W. The French Revolutionary Wars 1787–1802 (1996).
- Desan, Suzanne. "Internationalizing the French Revolution," French Politics, Culture & Society (2011) 29#2 pp. 137–60.
- Doyle, William. Origins of the French Revolution (3rd ed. 1999) online edition
- Englund, Steven. Napoleon: A Political Life. (2004). 575 pp; emphasis on politics excerpt and text search
- Fremont-Barnes, Gregory. The French Revolutionary Wars (2013), 96 pp; excerpt and text search
- Griffith, Paddy. The Art of War of Revolutionary France 1789–1802, (1998); 304 pp; excerpt and text search
- Rothenberg, Gunther E. (Spring 1988). "The Origins, Causes, and Extension of the Wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon". Journal of Interdisciplinary History. 18 (4): 771–93. doi:10.2307/204824. JSTOR 204824.
- Hardman, John. Louis XVI: The Silent King (2nd ed. 2016) 500 pp; much expanded new edition; now the standard scholarly biography; (1st ed. 1994) 224; older scholarly biography
- Schroeder, Paul. The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848. 1996; Thorough coverage of diplomatic history; hostile to Napoleon; online edition
- Wahnich, Sophie (2016). In Defence of the Terror: Liberty or Death in the French Revolution (Reprint ed.). Verso. ISBN 978-1-78478-202-3.
Economy and society
- Anderson, James Maxwell. Daily life during the French Revolution (2007)
- Andress, David. French Society in Revolution, 1789–1799 (1999)
- Kennedy, Emmet. A Cultural History of the French Revolution (1989)
- McPhee, Peter. "The French Revolution, Peasants, and Capitalism," American Historical Review (1989) 94#5 pp. 1265–80 JSTOR 906350
- Tackett, Timothy, "The French Revolution and religion to 1794," and Suzanne Desan, "The French Revolution and religion, 1795–1815," in Stewart J. Brown and Timothy Tackett, eds. The Cambridge History of Christianity vol. 7 (Cambridge UP, 2006).
Women
- Dalton, Susan. "Gender and the Shifting Ground of Revolutionary Politics: The Case of Madame Roland." Canadian journal of history (2001) 36#2
- Godineau, Dominique. The Women of Paris and Their French Revolution (1998) 440 pp 1998
- Hufton, Olwen. "Women in Revolution 1789–1796" Past & Present (1971) No. 53 pp. 90–108 JSTOR 650282
- Hufton, Olwen. "In Search of Counter-Revolutionary Women." The French Revolution: Recent debates and New Controversies Ed. Gary Kates. (1998) pp. 302–36
- Kelly, Linda. Women of the French Revolution (1987) 192 pp. biographical portraits or prominent writers and activists
- Landes, Joan B. Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Cornell University Press, 1988) excerpt and text search
- Melzer, Sara E., and Leslie W. Rabine, eds. Rebel daughters: women and the French Revolution (Oxford University Press, 1992)
- Proctor, Candice E. Women, Equality, and the French Revolution (Greenwood Press, 1990) online
- Roessler, Shirley Elson. Out of the Shadows: Women and Politics in the French Revolution, 1789–95 (Peter Lang, 1998) online
Historiography and memory
- Andress, David. "Interpreting the French Revolution," Teaching History (2013), Issue 150, pp. 28–29, very short summary
- Censer, Jack R. "Amalgamating the Social in the French Revolution." Journal of Social History 2003 37(1): 145–50. online
- Cox, Marvin R. The Place of the French Revolution in History (1997) 288 pp
- Desan, Suzanne. "What's after Political Culture? Recent French Revolutionary Historiography," French Historical Studies (2000) 23#1 pp. 163–96.
- Furet, François and Mona Ozouf, eds. A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution (1989), 1120 pp; long essays by scholars; strong on history of ideas and historiography (esp pp. 881–1034 excerpt and text search
- Furet, François. Interpreting the French revolution (1981).
- Germani, Ian, and Robin Swayles. Symbols, myths and images of the French Revolution. University of Regina Publications. 1998. ISBN 978-0-88977-108-6
- Geyl, Pieter. Napoleon for and Against (1949), 477 pp; summarizes views of major historians on controversial issues
- Hanson, Paul R. Contesting the French Revolution (2009). 248 pp.
- Kafker, Frank A. and James M. Laux, eds. The French Revolution: Conflicting Interpretations (5th ed. 2002), articles by scholars
- Kaplan, Steven Laurence. Farewell, Revolution: The Historians' Feud, France, 1789/1989 (1996), focus on historians excerpt and text search
- Kaplan, Steven Laurence. Farewell, Revolution: Disputed Legacies, France, 1789/1989 (1995); focus on bitter debates re 200th anniversary excerpt and text search
- Kates, Gary, ed. The French Revolution: Recent Debates and New Controversies (2nd ed. 2005) excerpt and text search
- Lewis, Gwynne. The French Revolution: Rethinking the Debate (1993) online; 142 pp.
- McPhee, Peter, ed. (2012). A Companion to the French Revolution. Wiley. ISBN 978-1-118-31641-2.
{{cite book}}
:|author=
has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link); 540 pp; 30 essays by experts; emphasis on historiography and memory - Reichardt, Rolf: The French Revolution as a European Media Event, European History Online, Mainz: Institute of European History, 2010, retrieved: 17 December 2012.
- Ross, Steven T., ed. The French Revolution: conflict or continuity? (1971) 131 pp; excerpt from historians table of contents
Primary sources
- Anderson, F.M. (1904). The constitutions and other select documents illustrative of the history of France, 1789–1901. The H. W. Wilson company 1904., complete text online
- Burke, Edmund (1790). "Reflections on the Revolution in France". The Physics Teacher. 25 (2): 72. Bibcode:1987PhTea..25...72F. doi:10.1119/1.2342155.
- Dwyer, Philip G. and Peter McPhee, eds. The French Revolution and Napoleon: A Sourcebook (2002) 235 pp; online
- Legg, L.G. Wickham, ed. Select Documents Illustrative of the History of the French Revolution (2 Volumes, 1905) 630 pp vol 1 online free; in French (not translated)
- Levy, Darline Gay, et al. eds. Women in Revolutionary Paris, 1789–1795 (1981) 244 pp excerpt and text search
- Mason, Laura, and Tracey Rizzo, eds. The French Revolution: A Document Collection (1998) 334 pp excerpt and text search
- Stewart, John Hall, ed. A Documentary Survey of the French Revolution (1951), 818 pp
- Thompson, J.M., ed. The French revolution: Documents, 1789–94 (1948), 287 pp
- This article incorporates text from the public domain History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814, by François Mignet (1824), as made available by Project Gutenberg.
External links
- Museum of the French Revolution (French)
- 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).
- Vancea, S. The Cahiers de Doleances of 1789, Clio History Journal, 2008.
- French Revolution Digital Archive a collaboration of the Stanford University Libraries and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, containing 12000 digitised images
- The guillotined of the French Revolution factsheets of all the sentenced to death of the French Revolution
- Jean-Baptiste Lingaud papers, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania. Includes a vast number of name lists and secret surveillance records as well as arrest warrants for aristocrats and their sympathisers. Most notable in this part of the collection are letters and documents from the Revolutionary Committee and the Surveillance Committee.
- French Revolution Pamphlets, Division of Special Collections, University of Alabama Libraries. Over 300 digitised pamphlets, from writers including Robespierre, St. Juste, Desmoulins, and Danton.
- "The French Revolution's Legacy" BBC Radio 4 discussion with Stefan Collini, Anne Janowitz and Andrew Roberts (In Our Time, 14 June 2001)