2. 1788-1792 a constitutional struggle
Increasingly bold elites articulated grievances against the king
1792-1794 acute crisis, consolidation, repression
Centralized government mobilized country’s resources to fight invading armies
1794-1799 a republic without leadership
Undermined by corruption and internal division, France maintained its Republic
until the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte
1799-1815 Napoleon’s Rule & Defeat
Republic to Empire to defeat and restoration of the Monarchy

3. France’s social classes determined legal rights and taxes
1st Estate: Clergy (no taxes, few obligations)
2nd Estate: Nobility (minimal taxes, few individual rights)
by 18th century noble titles could be purchased
50,000 new nobles created between 1700-1789
Much middle class wealth transferred to noble wealth
Less wealthy nobles resented the “Nouveau Rich”
Social boundaries between nobility and wealthy merchants of 3rd estate were ill defined
Bourgeoise considered themselves much different than people who worked with their
hands
3rd Estate: Everybody else (majority of taxes, no rights)
Wide gap between very wealthy merchants who were not nobility but who copied their
mannerisms and poor, landless urban laborers and rural peasants
Tensions between those who had bought titles and those who could not afford to buy titles

4. Causes
Social boundaries between noble and non-noble
ill-defined
From bourgeois wealth to noble wealth
Most noble wealth was proprietary—
tied to land
Influx of new wealth from banking,
shipping, slave trade, and mining
Identified with the nobility, not the
common people
Prosperous members of the Third
Estate aired their frustrations in public
debate

5. Causes
The articulation of discontent
Locke, Voltaire, and Montesquieu appeal to
discontented nobles and middle class
Economic reform
Simplify tax system
Free the economy from mercantilist
restrictions
Government should lift controls
(subsidies) on price of grain

6. Enlightenment changed public debate
Enlightenment ideas played a critical role in articulating grievances between
social classes
Enlightenment ideals appealed to nobles, middle class and poor alike even
though ideas about how those ideals would be applied varied greatly among the
social classes
Reform of government to provide checks and balances to power of the king
Reform of economy to eliminate mercantilism and fairer tax system
Suffrage for whom???
Clergy was frightened of Enlightenment Ideals because they feared losing power
and privileged position, perhaps even property

8. Peasants caught in web of obligations to church (tithe), landlords (rent, taxes) and
state (taxes and work)
Sales taxes
Head tax
Price Controls angered everyone and when Louis XVI attempted to eliminate certain
price controls the burden fell most heavily on the peasants and urban poor
1780’s poor harvests = soaring bread prices (poor urban laborers and peasants
survived mostly on bread)
1788: 50% of income spent on bread
1789: 80% of income spent on bread
Peasants who left the countryside to find work in the cities remained unemployed
1787-1789 unemployment in some urban centers was at 50%
Bread Riots occurred throughout the country in the Spring of 1789

9. Taxation
Tied to social class
Varied from region to region
Spending
Louis XIV spent extraordinary sums to maintain his lifestyle and engage in the wars
in Europe
Louis XV spent large amount of money when France entered the American
Revolutionary War on the side of the colonists
When Louis XVI attempted to raise taxes on the nobility, they seized the opportunity
to demand that he call the Estates-General into session

10. Louis XVI

11. This image chronicles a riot. Many believe it was caused by artisans who attacked the Reveillon wallpaper shop
and factory because they believed that the owner was about to lower wages. Over two days, more than 6,000
attacked the place. On 28 April 1789 troops were called and fired on the crowd. The official report noted 71 killed,
wounded, or detained. This conflict reveals the animosity between the artisans and authorities as well as
divisions between commoner owners and artisans that would eventually turn the Third Estate against itself.

12. 1789 Estates-General called by Louis XVI in May 1789 (Last called in
1626)
Traditionally 1st and 2nd Estates voted together to defeat the 3rd Estate
3rd Estate deputies argued that individual votes of each member should
be counted and that the size of the 3rd Estate be increased to give
commoners an equal voice
King agreed but nobles protested
Abbe Sieyes, “What is the Third Estate?”
King alarmed by pamphlet’s violent language withdrew his support for 3rd Estate
3rd Estate deputies left the body and declared themselves to be the
“National Assembly”
King locked deputies out of the meeting hall on June 20, 1789
Deputies met at nearby tennis court and took “The Tennis Court Oath”

13. National Assembly claimed the authority to remake the French
government in the name of the people
June 20, 1789 Swore an oath not to disband until France had a
Constitution
June 27, 1789 King ordered all delegates to join the National Assembly

14. Tennis Court Oath

15. The public (mostly people from the 3rd Estate)
Rumors:
aristocracy and King conspiring to punish the 3rd Estate by creating conditions
of scarcity and high prices for basic necessities (commoners= sans culottes) .
King had called on outside forces to help put down the rebellion
Storming of the Bastille 14 July 1789
Great Fear
October Days of 1789

16. Rumors in Paris: King’s troops mobilizing to march on the city.
Electors (people who had enough money to vote) organized the people
into a militia and organized a provisional municipal government
Storming the Bastille: July 14, 1789 --large crowd stormed the Bastille
intending to obtain arms for the city’s defense
Governor of the Bastille ordered his men to shoot into the crowd, killing 98 people
The crowd captured the Bastille, attacked the governor and chopped off his head

19. Rumors in the countryside: Austrians, Prussians or “brigands” were
invading France
Peasants organized militias
Attacked manor houses for food,
Looted records of manorial rents/dues
Burned estates

20. Parisian women from the market district, angered by the soaring
price of bread marched to Versailles on October 5 and demanded
to be heard
Not satisfied by the response of the National Assembly, crowd
broke through the gates at Versailles demanding that the King
return to Paris
On October 6, the King agreed
Agreement weakened King’s ability to resist further changes demanded by the
National Assembly

22. Storming the Bastille: caused the King and the Nobility to agree to create
the National Assembly
Great Fear caused National Assembly abolish feudal privileges
Church tithe
Labor requirement (corvee)
peasants must give landlord or the crown days of labor in return for privilege of
renting a plot to farm
Noble hunting privileges and tax exemptions
Sale of offices
October Days demonstrated that even the King was subject to the will of
the people

23. In late July 1789, as reports poured into Paris from the countryside of several thousand separate yet related
peasant mobilizations, a majority of them against seigneurial property, the deputies of the National Assembly
debated reforming not just the fiscal system or the constitution but the very basis of French society. In a
dramatic all–night session on 4–5 August deputies stepped forward, one after another, to renounce for the
good of the "nation" the particular privileges enjoyed by their town or region

24. Passive citizens: those who could not vote but retained certain natural
rights
Active Citizens: paid taxes and could hold office and vote
About 50% of men in France qualified as “Active Citizens”
Indirect representation: Voted for Electors whose property ownership
entitled them to hold office
Religious Toleration—meant an end to persecution but not
accommodation of religious differences
Abolished serfdom and slavery in continental France

25. "Active Citizen/Passive Citizen"
This cartoon mocks the distinction between active and passive citizens.
Many revolutionaries hated this difference, essentially dividing those with property
from those without. The propertied (active) were the only ones who could participate
in the political process.
“Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity: Exploring
The French
Revolution”
http://chnm.gmu.edu

26. Women were active in French Revolution
Joined clubs and held debates
Participated in demonstrations
circulation of news
Marie Gouze aka Olympe de Gouges
Declaration of the Rights of Women and the Citizen (1791)
Social distinctions based only on common utility
Women had same rights as men to resist authority and participate in government
Women had the right to name the fathers of illegitimate children
Divorce legalized in 1792

28. November 1789: Confiscated all church lands
1790: enacted Civil Constitution of the Clergy, bringing church under
state authority
Bishops and priests had to swear allegiance to the state
Intended to make Catholic Church of France free from interference by Rome
Pope threatened to excommunicate all Bishops or Priests who signed
the Civil Constitution
In Roman Catholic faith, excommunication meant damnation
Caused rift in the countryside between loyal Roman Catholics and Republican
supporters of the Revolution. People were forced to choose.

29. Abolition of guilds
Reorganized local governments into 83 equal departments
Sold off church lands to those who could afford them
Who did benefit from the reforms?

30. The counterrevolution
Outside France
Austria and Prussia declared support for
French monarchy (August 1791)
April 20, 1792: the National Assembly
declared war on Austria and Prussia
Radicals hoped the war would expose
“traitors”

31. Summer of 1792: Leaders of the Revolution were toppled by the Jacobins
Republicans: repudiated monarchy and claimed to rule on behalf of a
sovereign people
Why did Revolution turn radical inside France?
Politicization of the public
Shortages of bread
Runaway inflation
Press & Rumors
Crisis of leadership
Queen plotting with her brother, King Leopold II of Austria to stop the
revolution
King forced to support changes that he did not like
Queen convinced King to flee France in June 1791 but the Royal family
was captured at the border and returned to Paris where they were held
under house arrest at Tuileries Palace.

33. The Tuileries Palace

36. Elected by “free white men” in
September 1792
1. September Massacres
2. Declared France a Republic
3. Tried King in December
4. Executed King in January
1793
5. Confiscated property of
Enemies of the Revolution
6. Repealed primogeniture
7. Abolished slavery in Colonies
8. Set maximum prices for grain
9. Year 1, September 22, 1792

37. •All Europeans took a side in the
conflict
•Political societies outside of
France declared loyalty to the
Revolution
•Elites, Monarchs and Aristocracy
feared destruction of the order of
society

38. The French Republic
Military reforms
France faced Britain, Holland, Spain, and
Austria (February 1793)
French revolutionary armies
The revolutionary government drafted all
men capable of bearing arms (August 1793)
French military successes
Low Countries, Rhineland, Switzerland,
parts of Spain, and Savoy

39. The Execution of Louis XVI

40. 1. 1793 National Convention
drafted a new Constitution
2. Suspended indefinitely
because of war
3. Due to War Emergency
National Convention
delegated authority to
Committee of Public Safety

41. Committee faced sabotage from the political left and right
September 1793–July 1794: executions as high as twenty-five to thirty thousand
Three hundred thousand incarcerated between March 1793 and August 1794

42. The Reign of Terror
Committee faced sabotage from the political
left and right

43. Jean-Paul Marat (1743–1793)
Opposed moderates
Edited The Friend of the People
Killed by Charlotte Corday, a royalist (summer 1793)

44. Georges-Jacques Danton (1759–
1794)
Popular political leader
Member of the CPS
Wearied of the Terror
Sent to the guillotine (April
1794)

45. Maximilien Robespierre (1758–
1794)
Trained as a lawyer
Became president of the
National Convention
Member of the CPS
Enlarged the Terror

46. The legacy of the second French
Revolution
The sans-culottes
Workers’ trousers replaced breeches
The red cap of liberty
Citizen and citizeness
Festivals Mobilization for revolution
Counterrevolutionary groups
were also popular movements