Chapter 19 T&Q

Explain how the slave revolt on colonial St. Domingue led to the creation of the independent state of Haiti in 1804.

90% of the Haiti population consisted of people of color/slaves. Free people of color wanted to be seen as equals to Creoles so slaves held meetings in which they discussed when they were going to revolt. Slaves then rebelled and destroyed sugar and coffee plantations. France promised freedom to those who joined them in defeating the rebels so in 1804, Haiti became an independent nation.

émigrés

A person who has emigrated, often with a connotation of political or social self-exile.

Bastille-(what does it symbolize)

Against a background of poverty and political crisis, the people of Paris entered decisively onto the revolutionary stage. They believed that, to survive, they should have steady work and enough bread at fair prices. They also feared that the dismissal of the king's liberal finance minister would put them at the mercy of aristocratic landowners and grain speculators. At the beginning of July, knowledge spread of the massing of troops near Paris. On July 14, 1789, several hundred people stormed the Bastille, a royal prison, to obtain weapons for the city's defense (the raiding of the prison may symbolize the peasants breaking free of their shackles and fighting back against the upper class). Faced with popular violence, Louis soon announced the reinstatement of his finance minister and the withdrawal of troops from Paris. The National Assembly was now free to continue its work.

Explain how the French Revolution took a radical turn entailing terror at home and war with Europe.

As the commoners rebelled, the french revolution took a radical turn because of the bread riots by women who wanted to feed their families, people invading the royal palace in protest of the king, and people invading Bastille as a means to get weapons (and to symbolically break free from their shackles). During the Reign of Terror however, there many executions for those that "treasonous, republican" thoughts

Girondists

As with the Legislative Assembly, many members of the new National Convention belonged to the Jacobin Club of Paris. But the Jacobins themselves were increasingly divided into two bitterly opposed groups---the Girondists and the Mountain, led by Ropespierre and another young lawyer, Georges Jacques Danton. This division emerged clearly after the National Convention overwhelmingly convicted Louis XVI of treason. The Girondists accepted his guilt but did not wish to put the king to death.

Thermidorian Reaction

By June 1794 France had become fully weary of the mounting executions (1,300 in June alone), and Paris was alive with rumours of plots against Robespierre, member of the ruling Committee of Public Safety and leading advocate of the Terror. On 8 Thermidor (July 26) he gave a speech full of appeals and threats. The next day, the deputies in the National Convention shouted him down and decreed his arrest. He was arrested at the Hôtel de Ville, along with his brother Augustin, François Hanriot, Georges Couthon, and Louis de Saint-Just. The same guillotine that on 9 Thermidor executed 45 anti-Robespierrists executed, in the following three days, 104 Robespierrists, inaugurating a brief "White Terror" against Jacobins throughout France. The coup was primarily a reassertion of the rights of the National Convention against the Committee of Public Safety and of the nation against the Paris Commune. It was followed by the disarming of the committee, the emptying of the prisons, and the purging of Jacobin clubs. Social and political life became freer, more extravagant, and more personally corrupt. There was a splurge of fashion and a conspicuous consumption of bourgeois wealth, while the poor suffered from harsh economic conditions.

Declaration of the Rights of Man

Having granted new rights to the peasantry, the National Assembly moved forward with its reforms. On August 37, 1789, it issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. This clarion call of the liberal revolutionary ideal guaranteed equality before the law, representative government for a sovereign people, and individual freedom. This revolutionary credo, only two pages long, was disseminated throughout France, the rest of Europe, and around the world. The National Assembly's declaration had little practical effect for the poor and hungry people of Paris. The economic crisis worsened after the fall of the Bastille, as aristocrats fled the country and the luxury market collapsed. Foreign markets also shrank, and unemployment among the working classes grew. In addition, women---the traditional managers of food and resources in poor homes---could no longer look to the church, which had been stripped of its tithes, for aid.

Maximilien Ropespierre

He was a radical Jacobin leader and one of the principal figures in the French Revolution. In the latter months of 1793 he came to dominate the Committee of Public Safety, the principal organ of the Revolutionary government during the Reign of Terror, but in 1794 he was overthrown and guillotined. In April 1789, Robespierre was elected president of the powerful Jacobin political faction. A year later, he participated in writing the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, the foundation of the French constitution. When the people of Paris rose up against King Louis XVI in August 1792, Robespierre was elected to head the Paris delegation to the new National Convention. In December of that year, he successfully argued for the execution of the king and continued to encourage the crowds to rise up against the aristocracy. During the Reign of Terror, Ropespierre was able to eliminate most of his political opponents. On July 27, 1794, Robespierre and many of his allies were arrested and taken to prison. He was able to escape with the aid of a sympathetic jailer and hid in the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) in Paris. When he received word that the National Convention had declared him an outlaw, he tried to commit suicide, but succeeded only in wounding his jaw. Shortly after, troops from the National Convention stormed the building and seized and arrested Robespierre and his followers. The next day, he and 21 of his allies were executed at the guillotine.

Coercive Acts (Intolerable Acts)

In 1773, under the Tea Act of that year, the British government permitted the financially hard-pressed East India Company to ship tea from China directly to its agents in the colonies, rather than through London middlemen, who sold to independent merchants in the colonies. Thus the company secured a profitable monopoly on the tea trade, and colonial merchants were excluded. The price on tea was actually lowered for colonists, but the act generated a great deal of opposition because of its impact on local merchants. In protest, Boston men disguised as Native Americans staged a rowdy protest (later called the "Tea Party") by boarding East India Company ships and throwing tea from them into the harbor. In response, the so-called Coercive Acts of 1774 closed the port of Boston, curtailed local elections, and expanded the royal governor's power. County conventions in Massachusetts urged the acts be "rejected as the attempts of a wicked administration to enslave America." Other colonial assemblies joined in the denunciations.

sans-culottes

In March 1793 the National Convention was locked in a life-and-death political struggle between members of the Mountain and the more moderate Girondists. With the middle-class delegates so bitterly divided, the people of Paris once again emerged as the decisive political factor. The laboring poor and the petty traders were often known as the sans-culottes because their men wore trousers instead of the knee breeches of the aristocracy and the solid middle class. They demanded radical political action to defend the Revolution. The Mountain, sensing an opportunity to outmaneuver the Girondists, joined with sans-culottes activists to engineer a popular uprising. On June 2, 1793, armed sans-culottes invaded the Convention and forced its deputies to arrest twenty-nine Girondist deputies for treason. All power passed to the Mountain.

First and Second Continental Congress

In September 1774 the First Continental Congress---consisting of colonial delegates who sought at first to peacefully resolve conflicts with Britain---met in Philadelphia. The more radical members of the assembly argued successfully against concessions to the English crown. The British Parliament also rejected compromise, and in April 1775 fighting between colonial and British troops began at Lexington and Concord. Later, on July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. Written by Thomas Jefferson and others, this document boldly listed the tyrannical acts committed by George III (r. 1760-1820) and confidently proclaimed the natural rights of mankind and sovereignty of the American states. The Declaration of Independence in effect universalized the traditional rights of English people and made them the rights of all mankind. It stated that "all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." No other American political document has ever caused such excitement, either at home or abroad.

National Assembly

In angry response to the unfair treatment of the Third Estate, in June 1789 delegates of the Third Estate refused to meet until the king ordered the clergy and the nobility to sit with them in a single body. On June 17 the Third Estate, which had been joined by a few parish priests, voted to call itself the National Assembly (the first French revolutionary legislature, made up primarily of representatives of the Third Estate and a few from the nobility and clergy, in session from 1789 to 1791). The king's response was disastrously ambivalent. On June 23 he made a conciliatory speech urging reforms, and four days later he ordered the three estates to meet together. At the same time, Louis apparently followed the advice of relatives and court nobles who urged him to dissolve the Assembly by force. The king called an army of eighteen thousand troops toward the capitol to bring the delegates under control, and on July 11 he dismissed his finance minister and other more liberal ministers. It appeared that the monarchy was prepared to use violence to restore its control

The Great Fear

Just as the laboring poor of Paris had been roused to a revolutionary fervor, the struggling French peasantry had also reached a boiling point. In the summer of 1789, throughout France peasants began to rise in insurrection against their lords, ransacking manor houses and burning feudal documents that recorded their obligations. In some areas peasants reoccupied common lands enclosed by landowners and seized forests. Fear of marauders and vagabonds hired by vengeful landlords---called the Great Fear by contemporaries---seized the flames of rebellion.

Analyze the reasons Napoleon Bonaparte assumed control of France and much of Europe, and identify the factors that led to his downfall.

Napoleon was a skilled military man, had a lot of victories that led him to become commander, and although he failed conquest in Egypt he still returned to France so it did not ruin his reputation. He also conquered most of Europe, he imposed the Continental System and he was at war with most of Europe at one time (Prussia, Russia, Austria, and Britain became allies to overthrow Napoleon). Napoleon was then sent to Alba to live out his days but he comes back and in the end he gets sent to Africa (St. Helena) to live out his days.

Tennis Court Oath

On June 20, excluded from their hall because of "repairs," the delegates for the National Assembly moved to a large indoor tennis court where they swore the famous Tennis Court Oath, pledging not to disband until they had been recognized as a national assembly and had written a new constitution.

King Louis XVI & Marie Antoinette

On May 10, 1774, Louis Auguste became Louis XVI, with the death of his grandfather Louis XV. Only 20 years old at the time, Louis XVI was immature and lacked self-confidence. He wanted to be a good king and help his subjects, but he faced enormous debt and rising resentment towards a despotic monarchy. His failure to successfully address serious fiscal problems would dog him for most of his reign. Louis lacked sufficient strength of character and decisiveness to combat the influence of court factions or give support to reformers in their efforts to improve France's government. By 1789, the situation was deteriorating rapidly. In May of that year, to address the fiscal crisis, Louis XVI convened the Estates General, an advisory assembly of different estates or socio-economic classes (the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners). The meeting did not go well. By June, the Third Estate declared itself the National Assembly, aligned with the bourgeoisie, and set out to develop a constitution. Initially, Louis XVI resisted, declared the Assembly null and void, and called out the army to restore order. Public dissension grew and a National Guard formed to resist the King's actions. By July 1789, he was forced to acknowledge the National Assembly's authority. On July 14, riots broke out in Paris and crowds stormed the Bastille prison in a show of defiance toward the King. For a time, it seemed that Louis XVI could mollify the masses saying he would acquiesce to their demands. However, he accepted bad advice from the nobility's hard line conservatives and his wife, Marie Antoinette. He talked of reform but resisted demands for it. The royal family was forcibly transferred from Versailles to Paris on October 6, 1789. Louis ignored advice from advisors and refused to abdicate his responsibilities, and then agreed to a disastrous attempt to escape to the eastern frontier in June 1791. He and his family were brought back to Paris, and he lost all credibility as a monarch. On September 21, 1792, the Legislative Assembly proclaimed the First French Republic. That November, proof of Louis XVI's secret dealings and counter-revolutionary intrigues was discovered, and he and his family were charged with treason. Louis was soon found guilty by the National Assembly and condemned to death. On January 21, 1793, Louis XVI was guillotined in the Palace de la Revolution. His wife, Marie Antoinette, met the same fate nine months later, on October 16, 1793. Their young son, Louis-Charles, died in prison where living conditions were horrible. Daughter Marie-Thérèse, was released from prison in December 1795 into the custody of her family in Austria.

Identify the factors behind the revolutions in the late 18th century.

One factor was the unfair estates system that gave the clergy and nobility power over the commoners. Another factor was taxes. Taxes got people upset (especially the case for the American revolution since the colonies were being taxed indirectly from Great Britain, all the way across the Atlantic.)

The Mountain

One of the two groups of Jacobins that, during the conviction of Louis XVI, won the decision by a narrow majority to put the king to death. Louis was executed on January 21, 1793, by guillotine, which the French had recently perfected. However both Girondists and the Mountain were determined to continue the "war against tyranny." The Prussians had been stopped at the Battle of Valmy on September 20, 1792, one day before the republic was proclaimed. French armies then invaded Savoy and captured Nice, moved into the German Rhineland, and by November 1792 were occupying the entire Austrian Netherlands.

The Reign of Terror

Radical economic measures supplied the poor with bread and the armies with weapons known as the Reign of Terror (1793-1794) during which Robespierres Committee of Public Safety tried "enemies of the nation" and executed thousands (about 40,000 to be exact) suspected of treason and a revolutionary culture was imposed Enforced compliance with the republican beliefs and practices. For many Europeans of the time, the Reign of Terror represented a frightening perversion of the ideals of 1789.

To what extent did conflicts between the nobility and the bourgeoisie contribute to the outbreak of the French Revolution and determine the course of the revolution until 1793?

Since nobility had much more rights than the bourgeoisie and nobles only had to pay a small tax for things, this caused unrest in the Third Estate that was being taxed heavily. After trying to talk with nobles and the clergy, they locked the Third Estate representatives out of their conversations because, in their mind, the commoners didn't/shouldn't have a say in any political matter

Estates General

Spurred by a depressed economy and falling tax receipts, Louis XVI's minister of finance revived old proposals to impose a general tax on all landed property as well as to form provincial assemblies to help administer the tax, and he convinced the king to call an assembly of notables in 1787 to gain support for the idea. The assembled notables, mainly aristocrats and high-ranking clergy, declared that such sweeping tax changes required the approval of the Estates General, the representative body of all three estates, which had not met since 1614. Facing imminent bankruptcy, the king tried to reassert his authority. He dismissed the notables and established new taxes by decree. The judges of the Parlement of Paris promptly declared the royal initiative null and void. When the king tried to exile the judges, a tremendous wave of protest swept the country. Frightened investors refused to advance more loans to the state. Finally in July 1788, a beaten Louis XVI bowed to public opinion and called for the Estates General. Absolute monarchy was collapsing.

Federalists

Supporters of the proposed Constitution; To overcome the objections of the Anti-federalists, the Federalists promised to spell out some basic individual freedoms as soon as the new Constitution was adopted. The result was the first ten amendments to the Constitution, which the first Congress, passed shortly after it met in New York in March 1789. These amendments, ratified in 1791, formed an effective Bill of Rights to safeguard the individual. Most of them---trial by jury, due process of law, the right to assemble, freedom from unreasonable search---had their origins in English law and the English Bill of Rights of 1689. Other rights---the freedoms of speech, the press, and religion---reflected natural-law theory and the strong value colonists had placed on independence from the start.

Treaty of Paris

The British victory on all colonial fronts in the Seven Years' War (1756-1763; the war's battlefield stretched from central Europe to India to North America, pitting a new alliance of England and Prussia against the French, Austrians, and later, the Spanish. The war in North America arose particularly regarding the border between the French and British colonies) was ratified in the 1763 Treaty of Paris. Canada and all French territory east of the Mississippi River passed to Britain, and France ceded Louisiana to Spain as compensation for Spain's loss of Florida to Britain. France also gave up most of its holdings in India, opening the way to British dominance on the subcontinent.

The Committee of Public Safety

The Committee of Public Safety was created in April 1793 by the National Convention and then restructured in July 1793. It formed the de facto executive government in France during the Reign of Terror (1793-94), a stage of the French Revolution.

Declaration of the Rights of Woman

The constitution passed in September 1791 was the first in French history. It broadened women's rights to seek divorce, to inherit property, and to obtain financial support for illegitimate children from fathers, but excluded women from political office and voting. This decision was attacked by a small number of men and women who believed that the rights of man should be extended to all French citizens. Olympe de Gouges (1748-1793), a self-taught writer and woman of the people, protested the evils of slavery as well as the injustices done to women. In September 1791 she published her "Declaration of the Rights of Woman." This pamphlet echoed its famous predecessor, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, proclaiming, "Woman is born free and remains equal to man in rights." De Gouges' position found little sympathy among leaders of the Revolution, however.

Third Estate

The estate that consists of commoners (everyone besides the clergy and nobility). Commoners consisted over 95 percent of the population, elected primarily lawyers and government officials to represent them, with few delegates representing business and the poor. Members of the Third Estate were taxed heavily/unfairly but since most were poor, people had a hard time dealing with all the taxes. The unfair system inspired the abbé Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès (who himself was a member of the first estate) to write a pamphlet entitled "What is the Third Estate?" In this pamphlet, Sieyès argued that the third estate constituted the true strength of the French nation. The government conceded that the third estate should have as many delegates as the clergy and the nobility combined, but then upheld a system granting one vote per estate instead of one vote per person. This meant the two privileged estates could always outvote the third.

Second Estate

The estate that consists of members of the nobility that had most of the rights and privileges of the clergy, but not all. The nobility voted in a majority of conservatives, primarily from the provinces, where nobles were less wealthy and more numerous. Nonetheless, fully one-third of noble representatives were liberals committed to major changes. The nobility had to pay a few taxes, but they were very small and insignificant.

First Estate

The estate, or legal category/order, with the most power that consisted of assemblies of clergy. The local assemblies of the clergy elected mostly parish priests rather than church leaders, demonstrating their dissatisfaction with the church hierarchy. The clergy never had to worry about taxes because they were excused of all taxes.

How did the events of 1789 result in a constitutional monarch in France? Describe the consequences.

The events of 1789 resulted in a constitutional monarch for France because the unfair estaes system didn't give the commoners an opinion on political matters so the commoners finally said "screw it" and they formed the National Assembly (which was bad for King Louis because his power would be lessened by the Assembly).

The September Massacres

The fall of the monarchy marked a radicalization of the Revolution, a phase that historians often call the second revolution. Louis's imprisonment was followed by the September Massacres. Fearing invasion by the Prussians and riled up by rumors that counterrevolutionaries would aid the invaders, angry crowds stormed the prisons and killed jailed priests and aristocrats. In late September 1792 the new, popularly elected National Convention, which replaced the Legislative Assembly, proclaimed France a republic, a nation in which the people, instead of a monarch, held sovereign power.

Declaration of Pillnitz

The kings and nobles of continental Europe, who had at first welcomed the Revolution in Rance as weakening a competing power, now feared its impact. In June 1791 the royal family was arrested and returned to Paris after trying to slip out of France. To supporters of the Revolution, the attempted flight was proof that the king was treacherously seeking foreign support for an invasion of France. To the monarchs of Austria and Prussia, the arrest of a crowned monarch was unacceptable. Two months later they issued the Declaration of Pillnitz, which professed their willingness to intervene in France to restore Louis XVI's rule if necessary. It was expected to have a sobering effect on revolutionary France without causing war.

Jacobins

The new French representative body, called the Legislative Assembly, that convened in October 1791 had new delegates and a different character. Although the delegates were still prosperous, well-educated middle-class men, they were younger and less cautious than their predecessors. Many of them belonged to the political Jacobin Club. Such clubs had proliferated in Parisian neighborhoods since the beginning of the Revolution, drawing men and women to debate the political issues of the day. Jacobins and other deputies reacted with patriotic fury to the Declaration of Pillnitz. They said that if the kings of Europe were attempting to incite war against France, then "we will incite a war of people against kings.....Ten million Frenchmen, kindled by the fire of liberty, armed with the sword, with reason, with eloquence would be able to change the face of the world and make the tyrants tremble on their thrones." In April 1792 France declared war on Francis II, the Habsburg monarch.

Explain why and how American colonists forged a new, independent nation

The reasons why American colonists forged a independent nation are because of the indirect/increased taxes and the government control Britain had over the colonies. The Stamp and Tea Act really trigger the colonists because they had to pay taxes on every little thing that got shipped to the colonies and local merchants wouldn't profit off of tea anymore (even though the price of tea for the colonists actually went down). After the first shots are fired in Lexington and Concord, the Revolutionary War began and it didn't end until Britain made the Treaty of Paris of 1783 recognizing the independence of the American colonies. After the war, America forms its own Constitution and Bill of Rights (that's based on the English Bill of Rights)

bourgeoisie

The rich men and women who were members of the urban and rural Third Estate---the commoners (the middle class). The bourgeoisie were the politically progressive social class who supported the principles of constitutional government and of natural right, against the Law of Privilege and the claims of rule by divine right that the nobles and prelates had autonomously exercised during the feudal order.

Assess the relative importance of political, economic and social factors as causes of the French revolution.

The social class system of France, "The Old Regime," was unfair for members of the Third Estate (commoners) who have very limited power. After the National Assembly formed, this threatened the power of King Louis who eventually lost power and gave his power to the Estates General during the French Revolution.

The Directory

To prevent a new Ropespierre from monopolizing power, the new Assembly granted executive power to a five-man body called the Directory. The Directory continued to support French military expansion abroad. Was was no longer so much a crusade as a response to economic problems. Large, victorious French armies reduced unemployment at home. However, the French people quickly grew weary of the corruption and ineffectiveness that characterized the Directory. This general dissatisfaction revealed itself clearly in the national elections of 1797, which returned a large number of conservative and even monarchist deputies who favored peace at almost any price. Two years late Napoleon Bonaparte ended the Directory in a coup d'etat and substituted a strong dicttorship for a weak one.

levee en masse

When faced, in 1793, with the prospect of defeat, the National Convention issued an appeal for a levée en masse, which, theoretically, placed the entire population at the disposal of France's war machine. Thus was born the modern idea of the nation in arms. This concept has proved to have an enduring legacy, and has been adapted to suit a wide variety of contexts and time periods.

Anti-Federalists

When the results of the secret deliberations of the Constitutional Convention were presented to the states for ratification, a great public debate began. The opponents of the proposed Constitution---the Anti-federalists---charged that the framers of the new document had taken too much power from the individual states and made the federal government too strong. Moreover, many Anti-federalists feared for the individual freedoms for which they had fought.