The French Revolution

The French Revolution and the beginning of a new United States of America both

happened in 1789

The French Monarchy:1775 - 1793

King Louis XVI Queen Marie Antoinette

Europe on the Eve of Revolution

Key Terms

Nationalism- proud loyalty and devotion to a nation or it can be excessive or fanatical devotion to a nation and its interests, often associated with a belief that one country is superior to all others

Liberal-favoring reform, especially political reforms that extend democracy, distribute wealth more evenly, and protect the personal freedom of the individual

Bourgeoisie- middle classMeritocracy: leadership chosen on the basis of abilities

and achievements rather than birthright (such as the 2nd Estate, the nobility)

Class Division: Three Estates

France was divided into three classes, or estates

The First Estate: the clergy. The clergy were exempt from the taille, France’s chief tax.

The Second Estate, the nobility. They held many of the leading positions in the state. They did not pay ANY taxes.

The Third Estate, included everyone else from rich and educated bourgeois to poor illiterate peasants. About 98 percent of the population.

Causes of the French Revolution Cartoon Analysis

People Under the Old Regime

This image shows "the people" as a chained and blindfolded man being crushed under the weight of the rich, including both clergy and nobility. Such a perspective on the period before 1789 purposely exaggerates social divisions and would have found few proponents before the Revolution, but the image does reveal the social clash felt so intensely by the revolutionaries.

The Impact of the French Revolution

The French Revolution became the model for revolution in the modern world.

The power of nationalism was first experienced during the French Revolution and it is still powerful in existing nations and emerging nations today.

The French Revolution spread the principles of liberty and equality, which are held dear by many nations and individuals today.

The Metric System -the official system of measurement in all but three countries in the world (the US being on of the three).

Causes of the RevolutionIdeas of the Enlightenment

The Salon

Causes of the Revolution

Financial support of the American Revolution led to near collapse of the French government’s finances.

Causes of the Revolution

The French monarchy continued to spend lavishly on court luxuries.

The queen, Marie Antoinette, was especially known for her extravagance.

Causes of the RevolutionBREAD!

The French ate an average of two pounds of bread a day.Poor harvests lead to high grain prices. The people were hurting economically from a rise in prices higher than any increase in wages.

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% of Income Spent on Bread

1787

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Causes of the Revolution

The Third Estate carried the tax burden.

Who owned the land? Who paid the taxes?

Estates General- June 1789

Louis XVI needed money and was finally forced to call a meeting of the Estates-General, the French parliament, had not met since 1614, 175 years!

Estates GeneralEach order of French society had representatives in

the Estates GeneralIn order to fix France’s economic situation, most

members of the Third Estate wanted to set up a constitutional government that would abolish the tax exemptions of the clergy and nobility.

Voting in the Estates General

VOTE BY ESTATE

Under the old system the single vote of the First Estate and the single vote of the Second Estate together could outvote the Third Estate.

Clergy1st Estate

Nobility2nd Estate

Everyone Else3rd Estate

1 Vote

1 Vote

1 Vote

Voting in the Estates General

VOTE BY HEAD The Third Estate had

many more members than the other two estates.

The change to each member having a vote would give the Third Estate much more say in matters.

Clergy1st Estate

Nobility2nd Estate

Everyone Else3rd Estate

291 members

270 members

578 members

Voting in the Estates General

The Third Estate favored a system of each member voting, but the king upheld the traditional voting method of one vote per estate.

The Third Estate reacted by calling itself a National Assembly and deciding to draft a constitution.

King Louis XVI locked them out of their meeting hall.

The Third Estate was joined by ‘liberal’ members of the other two Estates and moved to a nearby tennis court.

Tennis Court Oath

The Third Estate took an oath (promised) they would continue to meet until they had finished drafting a constitution.

This oath is known as the Tennis Court Oath.

The Tennis Court Oath at Versailles by Jacques–Louis David

This amazingly rich sketch by Jacques–Louis David is one of the most famous works from the French revolutionary era. The thrust of the bodies together and toward the center stand for unity. The spectators, including children at the top right, all join the spectators. Even the clergy, so vilified later, join in the scene. Only one person, possibly Marat, in the upper left–hand corner, turns his back on the celebration. David is commemorating a great moment of the Revolution on 20 June 1789, in which the deputies, mainly those of the Third Estate, now proclaiming that they represent the nation, stand together against a threatened dispersal.

Storming of the Bastille-July 14, 1789

The Bastille-an armory and prison in Paris was a symbol of the tyrannical Bourbon monarchy

The commoners stormed and dismantled the Bastille looking for gunpowder and to free political prisoners

Only 7 prisoners were inside

This action became the flashpoint of the Revolution

The king’s authority collapsed.

Demolition of the Bastille

This watercolor painting illustrates the "demolition" of what the text refers to as the "horrible prison" of the Bastille. As workmen tear down the spires on the roof, ordinary people rip stones off the base. These stones soon became collectors’ items, souvenirs of the people’s role in the outbreak of the Revolution—and symbols of the way in which many more people wanted to commemorate the event than had participated in it.

Awakening of the Third Estate

With the Bastille being destroyed in the background, member of the Third Estate breaks his shackles. Here, the clergy and nobility recoil in fear, thereby emphasizing the conflict between the estates.

Symbols of The RevolutionThe Tricolor Flag

The WHITE of the Bourbons

The RED & BLUE of Paris.

Phrygian cap with cockade

Liberté, égalité,

fraternité Or

Death

National Assembly

One of the National Assembly’s first acts was to destroy aristocratic privileges

August 26, 1789 the assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.

The declaration proclaimed freedom and equal rights for all men, access to public office based on talent (meritocracy), and an end to exemptions from taxation.

Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen

26 August 1789Modeled in part by the American

Declaration of Independence

Men are born free and remain free and equal in rights.

Rights to liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression.

The law is the expression of the general will

Every man presumed innocent until judged guilty

Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen

No one should be disturbed for his opinions, even in religion

Every citizen may speak, write, and print freely

Taxes levied according to ability to pay

The question arose whether “all citizens” included women.

At first Louis XVI refused to accept the laws of the National Assembly but was later forced to sign under duress.

Women’s March on Versailles5 October 1789

Thousands of Parisian women armed with pitchforks, swords, muskets, marched to Versailles.

Why did they march? BREAD

The target of their anger was the Queen

“We want the baker and the baker's wife!"

End of the Monarchy

Louis XVI accepted the Constitution and the National Assembly this signified the end of the power of the monarchy in France.

The French Revolution was about to enter a more radical phase.

Jean-Paul Marat

One of the more important radical leaders was Jean-Paul Marat, who published the radical journal Friend of the People.

He argued that the poor had a right to take from the rich whatever they needed, even by violence.

Marat, was stabbed to death in his bathtub by Charlotte Corday

on July 13, 1793 at age 50.

The Death of Marat

This famous depiction of Marat’s assassination (1793) is by the unofficial (and sometimes official) artist of the French Revolution, Jacques–Louis David, a leading exponent of the neoclassical style. Scholars have seen this vision as a revolutionary pietà because of the repose of the corpse, so different from a normal body in a stage of rigor mortis. David also planned Marat’s funeral on behalf of the government.

Fate of the King

King Louis XVI was put on trial as a traitor of France and found guilty.

On January 21, 1793 he died by guillotine.

Marie Antoinette Executed October 16, 1793

Marie Antoinette was tried, convicted of treason and executed by guillotine nine months after her husband.

She was only 37

Marie Antoinette on the way to the guillotine. Pen and ink by

Jacques-Louis David

Committee of Public Safety

From 1793 to 1794, the Committee of Public Safety and the National Convention tried to defend France from foreign and domestic threats.

The Committee took steps to control France and bring order.

Enemies of the Revolution would be quickly tried and guillotined.

A man, and his family, might go to the guillotine for saying something critical of the revolutionary government, even neighbors would turn each other in.

Maximilien Robespierre

Robespierre was a lawyer and activist, so known for his honesty that he was called “The Incorruptible.”

He followed Rousseau’s ideas in The Social Contract, and he believed that anyone who would not submit to the general will as he interpreted it should be executed.

Robespierre was obsessed with ridding France of its domestic enemies.

The Reign of Terror

Robespierre was one of the chief architects of the Reign of Terror.

Lasted from September 1793-July 1794

Some estimates say that 40,000 or more people were killed during The Terror.

The National Razor

Republic of Virtue

National Convention had a dechristianization policy

This order was built on reason.

The new order was called the Republic of Virtue-a democratic republic of good citizens.

The titles “citizen” and “citizeness” replaced “mister” and “madame.”

The word saint was removed from street names and churches were closed.

The cathedral of Notre Dame was rededicated as a “temple of reason.”

DeChristianization

A new calendar was adopted. Years were numbered from September 22, 1792, the first day of the French Republic, and not from Christ’s birth.

The calendar contained 12 months with each month having three weeks of 10 days, with the tenth day a day of rest.

This practice eliminated Sundays.

No days of worship or religious holidays.

Temple of Reason

Churches were renamed

Temples of Reason.

The motto of the Revolution:

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

were inscribed on them.

Churches were stripped of irreplaceable works of art.

The Festival of Supreme Being

A new secular, non-religious, holiday

Republican Calendar

This poster shows the Republic’s new calendar under an image of Marianne, a symbol of the Republic as well as the ultimate expression of revolutionary liberation from the past. Shown without her pike, calmly reading a book with a cupid around, she is more the mother of this new system than a warrior for liberty, as in other prints.

Death of Robespierre

Many deputies of the National Convention feared Robespierre, and believed that the Terror had gone too far.

Robespierre was arrested and tried.

He was guillotined on

July 28, 1794 at age 36

After Robespierre’s death, the Terror ended, and the more radical members lost power.

Execution of Robespierre

The Directory

The government of France

1795 to 1799

The Directory - 1795 to 1799

Five elected directors acted as the executive committee, or Directory of France.

The period of the Directory was one of government corruption.

The Directory faced political enemies from both royalists and radicals

The Directory

It could not solve the country’s economic problems, and it was fighting the wars begun by the Committee of Public Safety.

The Directory relied more and more on military might to stay in power.

In 1799 a coup d’état–a sudden overthrow of the government–led by the popular general Napoleon Bonaparte toppled the Directory.

Napoleon took power.

Bonus Material

And who doesn’t love bonus material??

Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat

This color image portrays Marat stabbed to death in his bathtub by Corday. Marat’s housekeeper weeps over his death while Corday is led off to face justice for her crime.

This is the bathtub in which Jean Paul Marat, the Swiss born scientist and

French revolutionary was

murdered by Charlotte Corday on

July 13, 1793

Taking of the Bastille This color print emphasizes

the populace’s participation in the storming of the Bastille, showing the urban population fighting under a red banner with muskets, swords, and pikes against the royal soldiers. Stunning images such as these—as well as dramatic press reports—contributed to what has become the widespread view that the taking of the Bastille was a spontaneous, brave, and widely popular revolt against royal authority.

Nationalism

The French revolutionary army changed the nature of modern warfare and was an important step in creating modern nationalism

The new French army was a people’s army fighting a people’s war on behalf of a people’s government.

Warfare also became more destructive.

The Death of Robespierre

This engraving, based on a color portrait by Beys, depicts the death of Robespierre on the guillotine. The executioners wear not the traditional hangman’s hood but red bonnets representing liberty. This judgment notes Robespierre’s failure to the Revolution itself. Contemporaries emphasized that Robespierre’s punishment was just because it was the same to which "he had condemned so many thousands of innocent victims."

Death mask of French Revolutionary & member of

the Committee of Public Safety, Maximilien

Robespierre (1758-1794) who was sent to the guillotine in 1794

Execution of Marie Antoinette on October 16, 1793 at the Place de la Révolution

This postcard in English and French does show the broader scene at the execution of the Queen. Before the guillotine stands Marie Antoinette with Sanson, the same executioner who had dispatched her husband ten months before. Surrounded by soldiers, and tens of thousands of onlookers, she awaits the moment of death. Also on the platform is Marie Antoinette’s confessor. The execution, like that of her husband, took place at the Place de la Révolution, recently renamed from Place de Louis XV (currently Place de la Concorde). Dominating the entire scene was a giant statue of Liberty sitting on a pedestal that once held a statue of Louis XV. In Liberty’s right hand is a pike while she wears a Phrygian cap. This reshaping of the monarchical square seems quite consistent with the elimination of the Queen.

Liberty Leading the People

Eugene Delacroix Although Delacroix painted this work to commemorate the revolution of 1830, it features many political symbols from the revolution of 1789. Marianne, the symbol of Liberty, is wearing the Phrygian cap.

Outcomes of the French Revolution

In a nutshell:

The French Revolution left a powerful legacy for world history: secular society, nationalism, and democratic ideas.