Chapter 19 Terms and Questions

Maximilian Robespierre

A French lawyer and politician. He was one of the leaders of the Mountain (see definition above). He later led the Committee of Public Safety (see definition above). Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety advanced on several fronts in 1793, seeking to impose republican unity across the nation (First, collaborated with the sans culottes to make radical economic measures including fair price. Second, The Reign of Terror tried and executed thousands suspected of treason. Third, they brought about a cultural revolution that would transform former royal subjects into republican citizens). The success of French armies led the Committee of Public Safety to relax the emergency economic controls, but the Committee extended the political Reign of Terror. In March 1794 the revolutionary tribunal sentenced many of its critics to death. Two weeks later Robespierre sent long-standing collaborators who he believed had turned against him, including Danton, to the guillotine. In June 1794, a new law removed defendants' right of legal counsel and criminalized criticism of the Revolution. A group of radicals and moderates in the Convention on July 27, 1794 - a date known as 9 Thermidor according to France's newly adopted republican calendar. The next day it was Robespierre's turn to be guillotined.

Estates General

A legislative body in pre-revolutionary France made up of representative for each of the three classes, or estates. It was called into session for the first time in 1789 since 1614. Following centuries old tradition, each estate met seperatley to elect delegates, first at a local and then at a regional level. Results of the elections reveal the mindset of each estate on the eve of the Revolution. The local assemblies of the clergy, representing the third estate, elected mostly parish priests rather than church leaders, demonstrating their dissatisfaction with the church hierarchy. The nobility, or the Second Estate, voted in a majority of conservatives for the Estates General, primarily from the provinces, where nobles were less wealthy, more devout, and more numerous. Nonetheless, fully one third of noble representatives were liberals committed to major changes. Commoners of the third estate, who constituted over 95% of the population, elected primarily lawyers and government officials to represent them at the Estates General, with few delegates representing business and the poor. The petition for change drafted by the assemblies showed a surprising degree of consensus about the key issues confronting the realm. In all three estates, voices spoke in favor of replacing absolutism with a constitutional monarchy in which laws and taxes would require the consent of the Estates General in regular meetings. There was also a strong feeling that individual liberties would have to be guaranteed by law and the economic regulations should be loosened. On May 5, 1789, the 1200 delegates of the 3 estates gathered in Versailles for the opening session of the Estates General. Despite widespread hopes for serious reform, the Estates General quickly deadlocked over the issue of voting procedures. Controversy had begun during the electoral process itself, when the government confirmed that, following precedent, each estate should meet and vote separately. During the lead up to the Estates General, critics had demanded a single assembly dominated by the third estate. In his famous pamphlet What is the Third Estate? the abbe Emanuel Joseph Sieyes argued that the nobility was a tiny overpriveleged minority and that the third estate constituted great strength of the French nation. The government granted the third estate as many delegates as the clergy and nobility combined, but then nullified that reform by granting one vote per estate instead of one vote per person. This meant that the two privileged estates could always outvote the third.

Girondists

A moderate group that fought for control of the French National Convention in 1793 (against the Mountain). The division between the Girondists and the Mountain 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. Both the Girondists and the Mountain were determined to continue the "war against tyranny". 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 Mountain eventually joins with the sans-culottes, sensing an opportunity to outmaneuver the Girondists, 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.

Jacobins

A political club in revolutionary France whose members were well-educated radical republicans. Since the National Assembly had declared sitting deputies ineligible for re-election, none of them had previously served as national representatives. 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 Frenchman, kindled by the fire of liberty, armed with the sword, the reason, with eloquence would be able to change to face of the world and make the tyrants tremble on their thrones."

Thermidorian Reaction

A reaction to the violence of the Reign of Terror in 1794, resulting in the execution of Robespierre and the loosening of economic controls. The success of French armies led the Committee of Public Safety to relax the emergency economic controls, but the Committee extended the political Reign of Terror. In March 1794 the revolutionary tribunal sentenced many of its critics to death. Two weeks later Robespierre sent long-standing collaborators who he believed had turned against him, including Danton, to the guillotine. In June 1794, a new law removed defendants' right of legal counsel and criminalized criticism of the Revolution. A group of radicals and moderates in the Convention on July 27, 1794 - a date known as 9 Thermidor according to France's newly adopted republican calendar. The next day it was Robespierre's turn to be guillotined. As Robespierre's closest supporters followed their leader to the guillotine, the respectable middle-class lawyers and professionals who had led the liberal Revolution of 1789 reasserted authority. This period of Thermidorian reaction, as it was called, hearkened back the ideals of the early revolution; the new leaders of government proclaimed an end to the revolutionary expediency of the Terror and the return of representative government, the rule of law, and liberal economic controls, let prices rise sharply, and severely restricted the local political organizations through which the sans-culottes exerted their strength.

Emigres

Any of the Frenchmen, at first mostly aristocrats, who fled France in the years following the French Revolution of 1789. From their places of exile in other countries, many émigrés plotted against the Revolutionary government, seeking foreign help in their goal of restoring the old regime. The Revolutionary leaders in France, fearful of their activity, took action against them: émigrés who did not return by January 1792 were liable to death as traitors; in the same year their property was confiscated by the state. Under the leadership of King Louis XVI's oldest brother, the comte de Provence (future king Louis XVIII), many émigrés set up a court at Koblenz in the Rhineland of Germany. One of their number, Louis-Joseph, prince de Condé, commanded an army of émigrés that assisted foreign powers in the wars against France, but the exiles never posed a serious military threat. A defeat at Quiberon Bay in southern Brittany in July 1795, in an attempt to aid a peasant revolt, resulted in the execution of over 600 émigrés.

Bastille - (what does it symbolize)

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. Faced with popular violence, Louis XVI 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. SIGNIFICANCE: IT SYMBOLIZED REVOLUTION AND DISSATISFACTION WITH THE MONARCHY IN FRANCE. By the end of the eighteenth century, the Bastille was the commanding heights of controlling Paris and the prison of political prisoners. Any famous people daring to oppose the feudal system, were being held here. The Bastille prison became a symbol of the French absolute monarchy. In July 14th, 1789, people finally captured the Bastille and the storming of the Bastille has become the signal of French national revolution. The event signaled Revolution to the world. Jefferson understood it immediately and later advocated and implored Washington to lend the French a helping hand. Lafayette understood its significance and sent a key to the prison doors to George Washington. Today it's behind glass framed on the wall before the stairs that lead to Washington's bedroom. The storming of Bastille was a symbolic overthrow of royal power because the French people were starving, overtaxed, powerless over the royal decrees that Louis was daily reigning down upon them and they had two choices - continue to take the abuse or revolt and they chose to revolt.

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

Born in Corsica into an impoverished noble family in 1769, Napoleon left home and became a lieutenant in the French artillery in 1785. Converted to the revolutionary cause and rising rapidly in the republican army, Napoleon returned to France before the fiasco was generally known, and his reputation remained intact. The flamboyant thirty-year-old Napoleon, nationally revered for his heroism, was an ideal figure of authority. On November 9, 1799, Napoleon and his conspirators ousted the Directors, and the following day soldiers disbanded the legislature at bayonet point. Napoleon was named first consul of the republic, and a new constitution consolidating his position was overwhelmingly approved by a nationwide vote in December 1799. Republican appearances were maintained, but Napoleon became the real ruler of France. Napoleon's domestic policy centered on using his popularity and charisma in order to end civil strife. He did so by appeasing powerful groups in France by according them favors in return for loyal service. Napoleon's bargain with the solid middle class was codified in the famous Civil Code of March 1804, also known as the Napoleonic Code. At the same time, Napoleon consolidated his rule by recruiting disillusioned revolutionaries to form a network of ministers, prefects, and centrally appointed mayors. FACTORS THAT LED TO HIS DOWNFALL: - relentless ambitions ultimately led to his downfall - made the fatal mistake of attempting to invade Russia in 1812 - he is forced to abdicate the throne in 1814

Federalists

Federalists were those in favor of the U.S. Constitution. Their adopted name implied a commitment to a loose, decentralized system of government. Some of the most famous federalists were Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. Together they published a series of essays known as the Federalist Papers which defended the document to the public. The plan was to write a total of twenty five essays, with the work divided equally among the three men. In the end they wrote 85 essays, in the span of 6 months. John Jay got sick after writing five, Madison wrote twenty nine, Hamilton wrote the other 51. The opponents of the proposed Constitution, the Anti federalists, charged that the framers of the document had taken too much power from the individual states and made the federal government too strong. To overcome these objections, the Federalists promised to spell out these basic 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.

First and Second Continental Congress

From 1774 to 1789, the Continental Congress served as the government of the 13 American colonies and later the United States. In September 1774, the First Continental Congress - consisting of colonial delegates who sought at first to peacefully resolve conflicts with Britain - met in Philadelphia n response to the Coercive/Intolerable Acts. The more radical members of this assembly argued successfully against concessions to the English crown. The British Parliament also rejected compromise and in April 1775 fighting broke out. On July 4th, 1776, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Deceleration of Independence. Written by Thomas Jefferson and others, this document boldly listed the tyrannical acts committed by George III and confidently proclaimed the natural rights of mankind and the sovereignty of the American states. The Declaration in effect universalized the traditional rights of 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.

The Directory

In the same year as the Thermidorian Reaction, the National Convention inaugurated a bicameral legislative system for the first time in the Revolution, with a Council of 500 serving as the lower house that initiated legislation and a Council of Elders (composed of about 250 members aged forty years or older) acting as the upper hose that approved new laws. To prevent a new Robespierre 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. War 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. The trauma of years of military and political violence had alienated the public, and the Directory's heavy-handed and opportunistic policies did not reverse the situation. 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 year later Napoleon Bonaparte ended the Directory in a coup d-etat and substituted a strong dictatorship for a weak one.

The Great Fear

Just as the laboring poor of Paris had decisively intervened in the revolution, the struggling French peasantry also took matters into their own hands. Peasants bore the brunt of state taxation, church tithes, and noble privileges. Since most did not own enough land to be self-sufficient, they were hard-hit by the rising price of bread. 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 forest. Fear of marauders and vagabonds hired by vengeful landlords - called the Great Fear by contemporaries - seized the rural poor and fanned the flames of rebellion. Faced with chaos, the National Assembly responded to the swell of popular uprising with a surprise maneuver on the night of August 4, 1789. By a decree of the Assembly, all the old noble privileges - peasant serfdom where it still existed, exclusive hunting rights, fees for having legal cases judged in the lord's court, the right to make peasants work on the roads, and a host of other dues - were abolished along with the tithes paid to the church. From this point on, French peasants would seek mainly to protect and consolidate this victory.

The Mountain

Led by Robespierre, the French National Convention's radical faction, which seized legislative power in 1793. The division between the Girondists and the Mountain emerged clearly after the National Convention overwhelmingly convicted Louis XVI of treason. . Both the Girondists and the Mountain were determined to continue the "war against tyranny". 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 Mountain eventually joins with the sans-culottes, sensing an opportunity to outmaneuver the Girondists, 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.

Declaration of the Rights of Man

On August 27, 1789, the National Assembly further issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of 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 and the rest of Europe and around the word. The National Assembly's declaration had little practical effect for the poor and hungry people of France. 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 urban 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.

Tennis Court Oath

On June 20th, excluded from their hall because of "repairs", the delegates 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.This oath would come to have major significance in the revolution as the Third Estate would constantly continue to protest to have more representation. Some historians have argued that, given political tensions in France at that time, the deputies' fears, even if wrong, were reasonable and that the importance of the oath goes above and beyond its context. The oath was both a revolutionary act, and an assertion that political authority derived from the people and their representatives rather than from the monarch himself. Their solidarity forced Louis XVI to order the clergy and the nobility to join with the Third Estate in the National Assembly in order to give the illusion that he controlled the National Assembly. This oath would prove vital to the Third Estate as a step of protest that would eventually lead to more power in the Estates General, and every governing body thereafter. The Oath signified for the first time that French citizens formally stood in opposition to Louis XVI, and the National Assembly's refusal to back down forced the king to make concessions. It was foreshadowed by, and drew considerably from, the 1776 United States Declaration of Independence, especially the preamble. The Oath also inspired a wide variety of revolutionary activity in the months afterwards, ranging from rioting across the French countryside to renewed calls for a written French constitution. Likewise, it reinforced the Assembly's strength and forced the King to formally request that voting occur based on head, not power.

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

POLITICAL: King Louis XVI's rule as well as his mistakes played a huge part in the Revolution, because although he was considered an "eager to please monarch" at first, everything he did made the people of France increasingly more anxious and riled. Louis waffled on political reform and the economy, and proved unable to quell the rising storm of opposition. Louis XIV's finance minister revived old proposals to impose a general tax on all landed property. Facing imminent bankruptcy, the king tried to reassert his authority. He dismissed the notables and established new taxes by decree The judges of the Parliament 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. In response to the National Assembly, 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 capital to bring the delegates under control, and on July 11, he dismissed his finance minister. The people feared that this would put them at the mercy of aristocratic landowners and grain speculators. Faced with popular violence after the storming of the Bastille, Louis soon announced the reinstatement of his finance minister and the withdrawal of troops from Paris. But still, the people were left with a bitter resentment toward the monarchy. ECONOMIC: The debt left over from both the seven years war as well as the American Revolution has a major effect on the French Revolution since their attempts to reform the tax system failed, and the government was forced to borrow money, leading to an increasing national debt. Unlike England, which had a far larger national debt relative to its population, France had no central bank and no paper currency. Therefore, when a depressed economy and a lack of public confidence made it increasingly difficulty for the government to obtain new loans, the government could not respond simply by printing more money. It had no alternative, but to try increasing taxes. Because France's tax system was unfair and out-of-date, increased revenues were possible only through fundamental reforms. Such reforms, which would affect all groups in France's complex and fragmented society, were guaranteed to create social and political unrest. SOCIAL: The main social cause of the French Revolution was the high population density in the country. Overpopulation caused an unrelenting strain on natural resources in the country, and this led to a number of complications that eventually gave rise to the revolution. The country was divided into three social classes with the two top classes consisting of only a few elite members of the society while the rest of the population was left out. The third estate, or the lowest of the classes did not enjoy certain privileges and had to shoulder heavy feudal dues which is why they decided to pursue change. Poverty also played an important role in fueling the French Revolution. The horrible impoverished condition for the Third Estate only helped to fan the flames and increase the anger and resentment toward the government. "Do you hear the people sing? Singing the songs of angry men? It is the music of the people who will not be slaves again! When the beating of your heart echoes the beating of the drums. There is a life about to start when tomorrow comes." -Les Miserables

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

SOCIAL CHANGE: Economic growth created new inequalities between the rich and the poor. Eighteenth century European society was legally divided into groups with special privileges, such as the nobility and clergy, and groups with special burdens, such as the peasantry. Poor peasants and urban laborers, who constituted the vast majority of the population, bore the brunt of population and were excluded from the world of privilege. Europe's population rose rapidly after 1750, and its cities and towns swelled in size. Inflation kept pace with population growth, making it ever more difficult to find affordable food and living space. GROWING DEMANDS FOR LIBERTY AND EQUALITY: In addition to destabilizing social changes, the ideals of liberty and equality helped fuel revolutions in the Atlantic world. The call for liberty was first a call for human rights, but it was also a call for a new kind of government. Reformers believed that the people had sovereignty - that is, that the people alone had the authority to make laws limiting an individual's freedom of action. Equality was a more ambiguous. (Generally, 18th century liberals did not see men and women as equal, few questioned the superiority of Europeans over Africans, also they never believed that everyone should be equal economically.) The age of revolution was, however, marked by bitter conflicts over how far reform should go and to whom it should apply. THE SEVEN YEARS WAR: Both France and England were left after the end of the Seven Years War with tremendous amounts of debt. France emerged from the conflict humiliated and broke, but with its profitable Caribbean colonies intact. In the aftermath of war, both British and French governments had to raise taxes to repay loans, raising a storm of protest and demands for fundamental reform. The seeds of revolutionary conflict were thus sown.

First Estate

The CLERGY The local assemblies of the clergy, representing the third estate, elected mostly parish priests rather than church leaders to go to the Estate General, demonstrating their dissatisfaction with the church hierarchy. The First Estate comprised the entire clergy, traditionally divided into "higher" and "lower" clergy. Although there was no formal demarcation between the two categories, the upper clergy were, effectively, clerical nobility, from the families of the Second Estate. In the time of Louis XVI, every bishop in France was a nobleman, a situation that had not existed before the 18th century. At the other extreme, the "lower clergy" (about equally divided between parish priests and monks and nuns) constituted about 90 percent of the First Estate, which in 1789 numbered around 130,000 (about 0.5% of the population).

Third Estate

The COMMONERS (everyone else that's not the nobility/ clergy) that constituted over 95% of the population. They elected primarily lawyers and government officials to represent them at the Estates General, with few delegates representing business and the poor. The Third Estate can be divided into two groups, urban and rural. The urban included the bourgeoisie, as well as wage-laborers. The rural included free peasants (who owned their own land) who could be prosperous (serfs, or peasants working on a noble's land). The free peasants paid disproportionately high taxes compared to the other Estates and were unhappy because they wanted more rights. In addition, the First and Second Estates relied on the labor of the Third, which made the latter's unequal status all the more glaring. There were an estimated 27 million people in the Third Estate when the French Revolution started. Men and women shared the hard life of physical labor and food shortages. Most were born within this group and died as a part of it, too. It was extremely rare for people of this ascribed status to make it out into another estate. Those who did so managed as a result of either being recognized for their extraordinary bravery in a battle or entering religious life. A few commoners were able to catch the eye of the second estate, marry, and join them, although this was quite rare.

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

The Constitutional Monarchy ended when Louis XVI attempted to take flight in June 1791. With war declared on Austria; because they wanted Louis XVI and his queen to remain in power. The new Legislative Assembly declared France a Republic. At the end of 1792, French Revolution took a radical turn; with the execution of the royal family. To the monarchs of Austria and Prussia, the arrest of a crowned monarch was unacceptable. The kings of continental Europe, who had at first welcomed the Revolution in France as weakening the competing power, now feared its impact. The French Revolution takes another turn for the worse during the Reign of Terror, where Robespierre and his Committee of Public Safety executing anyone who went against their republican ideas or who was even slightly suspected of treason. Because according to Robespierre: "Terror is nothing more than prompt, severe, inflexible justice."

Coercive Acts (Intolerable Acts)

The Intolerable Acts were the American Patriots' term for a series of punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea Party. They were meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in throwing a large tea shipment into Boston Harbor. In Great Britain, these laws were referred to as the Coercive Acts. The acts took away Massachusetts' self-government and historic rights, triggering outrage and resistance in the Thirteen Colonies. They were key developments in the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775. Four of the acts were issued in direct response to the Boston Tea Party: - The Boston Port Act, the first of the laws passed in 1774 in response to the Boston Tea Party, closed the port of Boston until the colonists paid for the destroyed tea and until the king was satisfied that order had been restored. Colonists objected that the Port Act punished all of Boston rather than just the individuals who had destroyed the tea, and that they were being punished without having been given an opportunity to testify in their own defense. - The Massachusetts Government Act provoked even more outrage than the Port Act because it unilaterally took away Massachusetts' charter and brought it under control of the British government. Under the terms of the Government Act, almost all positions in the colonial government were to be appointed by the governor, Parliament, or king. The act also severely limited the activities of town meetings in Massachusetts to one meeting a year, unless the Governor called for one. Colonists outside Massachusetts feared that their governments could now also be changed by the legislative fiat of Parliament. - The Administration of Justice Act allowed the Royal governor to order that trials of accused royal officials take place in Great Britain or elsewhere within the Empire if he decided that the defendant could not get a fair trial in Massachusetts. Although the act stipulated for witnesses to be reimbursed after having traveled at their own expense across the Atlantic, it was not stipulated that this would include reimbursement for lost earnings during the period for which they would be unable to work, leaving few with the ability to testify. George Washington called this the "Murder Act" because he believed that it allowed British officials to harass Americans and then escape justice. Many colonists believed the act was unnecessary because British soldiers had been given a fair trial following the Boston Massacre in 1770. - The Quartering Act applied to all of the colonies, and sought to create a more effective method of housing British troops in America. In a previous act, the colonies had been required to provide housing for soldiers, but colonial legislatures had been uncooperative in doing so. The new Quartering Act allowed a governor to house soldiers in other buildings if suitable quarters were not provided. While many sources claim that the Quartering Act allowed troops to be billeted in occupied private homes. Although many colonists found the Quartering Act objectionable, it generated the least protest of the four Coercive Acts. - A fifth act, the Quebec Act, enlarged the boundaries of what was then the Province of Quebec and instituted reforms generally favorable to the French Catholic inhabitants of the region; although unrelated to the other four Acts, it was passed in the same legislative session and seen by the colonists as one of the Intolerable Acts. The Patriots viewed the acts as an arbitrary violation of the rights of Massachusetts, and in September 1774 they organized the First Continental Congress to coordinate a protest. As tensions escalated, the American Revolutionary War broke out in April 1775, leading in July 1776 to the declaration of an independent United States of America.

Second Estate

The NOBILITY They voted in a majority of conservatives for the Estates General, primarily from the provinces, where nobles were less wealthy, more devout, and more numerous. Nonetheless, fully one third of noble representatives were liberals committed to major changes. The Second Estate was the French nobility and (technically, though not in common use) royalty, other than the monarch himself, who stood outside of the system of estates. The Second Estate is traditionally divided into noblesse d'épée ("nobility of the sword"), and noblesse de robe ("nobility of the robe"), the magisterial class that administered royal justice and civil government. The Second Estate constituted approximately 1.5% of France's population.[citation needed] Under the ancien régime ("old rule/old government"), the Second Estate were exempt from the corvée royale (forced labour on the roads) and from most other forms of taxation such as the gabelle (salt tax) and most important, the taille (the oldest form of direct taxation). This exemption from paying taxes led to their reluctance to reform.

The Committee of Public Safety

The National Convention in April of 1793 formed the Committee of Public Safety to deal with threats from withing and outside France. The committee, led by Robespierre, held dictatorial power, allowing it to use whatever force necessary to defend the Revolution. Moderates in leading provincial cities revolted against the committee's power and demanded a decentralized government. Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety advanced on several fronts in 1793 and 1794, seeking to impose republican unity across the nation. First, they collaborated with the sans-culottes, who continued pressing the common people's case for fair prices and a moral economic order. Thus in 1793 Robespierre and his coworkers established a planned economy with egalitarian social overtones. rather than let supply and demand determine the prices, the government set maximum prices for key products. Second, while radical economic measures furnished the poor with bread and the armies with supplies the Reign of Terror enforced compliance with republican beliefs and practices. Special courts responsible only to Robespierre's Committee of Public Safety tried "enemies of the nation" for political crimes. Some forty thousand French men and women were executed or died in prison and around three hundred thousand were executed or died in prison and around three hundred thousand were arrested, making Robespierre's Reign of Terror one of the most controversial phases of the Revolution. The third element of the Committee's program was to bring about a cultural revolution that would transform former royal subjects into republican citizens. The government sponsored revolutionary art and songs as well as a series of new secular festivals to celebrate republican virtue and patriotism. It also attempted to rationalize French daily life by adopting the decimal system for weights and measures and a new calendar based on ten-day weeks. Another important element of this cultural revolution was the campaign of de-Christianization, which aimed to eliminate Catholic symbols and beliefs. Fearful of the hostility aroused in rural France, however, Robespierre called for a halt to de-Christianization measures in mid-1794. The final element of the Committee of Public Safety was its appeal to a new sense of national identity and patriotism. With a common language and a common tradition newly reinforced by the revolutionary ideals of popular sovereignty and democracy, many French people developed an intense emotional commitment to the defense of the nation, and they saw the war against foreign opponents as a life and death struggle between good and evil. This was the birth of modern nationalism, which would have a profound effect on subsequent European history.

The September Massacre

The September Massacres were a wave of killings in Paris (September 2-7, 1792) and other cities in late summer 1792, during the French Revolution. There was a fear that foreign and royalist armies would attack Paris and that the inmates of the city's prisons would be freed and join them. Radicals called for preemptive action, especially journalist Jean-Paul Marat, who called on draftees to kill the prisoners before they could be freed. The action was undertaken by mobs of National Guardsmen; it was tolerated by the city government, the Paris Commune, which called on other cities to follow suit. By September 6, half the prison population of Paris had been summarily executed: some 1200 to 1400 prisoners. Of these, 233 were nonjuring Catholic priests who refused to submit to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. However, the great majority of those killed were common criminals. The massacres were repeated in many other French cities. No one was prosecuted for the killings, but the political repercussions first injured the Girondists (who seemed too moderate) and later the Jacobins (who seemed too bloodthirsty).

Treaty of Paris

The Treaty of Paris ended the Seven Years War which pitted a new alliance of England and Prussia against the French, Austrians and Spanish The origins of the war were in conflicts left unresolved at the end of the War of Austrian Succession in 1748 The war was fought both in Europe and in North America where unresolved tensions lingered between the British and French colonies. In 1759, the British laid siege to Quebec for four long months, finally defeating the French in a battle that sealed the nation's fate in North America. British victory on all colonial fronts 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. By 1763 Britain had realized its goal of monopolizing a vast trading and colonial empire, but at a tremendous cost in war debt. France emerged from the conflict humiliated and broke, but with its profitable Caribbean colonies intact. In the aftermath of the war, both British and French governments had to raise taxes to repay loans, raising a storm of protest and demands for fundamental reform. The seeds of revolutionary conflict in the Atlantic world were thus sown.

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

The colonists' reasons for forming a new nation were: the tyrannical acts of King George III, the unfair taxes posed upon the colonies to help Britain to repay their war debts, (Stamp Act, Coercive Acts) and a general dislike of the though of an island across the sea having so much control over them. The first step was revolution, then a Declaration of Independence, and finally victory. The liberal program of the American Revolution was then consolidated by the federal Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the creation of a national republic. Assembling in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, the delegated to the Constitutional Convention were determined to end the period of economic depression, social uncertainty, and leadership under a weak central government that had followed independence. The delegates thus decided to grant the federal government important powers: regulation of domestic and foreign trade, the right to tax, and the means to enforce laws. Strong rule would be place squarely in the context of representative self-government. Senators and Congressmen would be the lawmaking delegates of the voters, and the president of the republic would be the elected official. A system of checks and balances was put in place to make sure that authority was distributed across three different branches: the executive, legislative, and judicial. (preventing one interest from gaining too much power). After this Constitution was proposed, the Anti-federalists complained that the proposed government took too much power from the states and made the federal government too strong. In response, the Federalists added the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights, including Freedom of Speech, Religion, Press, etc.

Declaration of the Rights of Women

The day after the women's march on Versailles, the National assembly followed the king to Paris, and the next two years, until September 1791, saw the consolidation of the liberal revolution. The constitution passed in September 1791 was the first in French history. It legalized divorce and broadened women's rights 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. Politically active women wrote pamphlets, formed clubs, and petitioned the assembly on behalf of women's right to participate in the life of the nation. Olympe de Gouges, 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 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.

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

The events of 1789 were as follows: - The Storming of Bastille on July 14, 1789 (Symbolizes revolution and dissatisfaction with the monarchy in France). - Summer of 1789 The Great Fear (peasants begin to rise in insurrection against their lords, ransacking manor houses and burning feudal documents that recorded their obligations) - August 4, 1789 The National Assembly responds to the Great Fear by abolishing serfdom and church tithes - August 27, 1789 The Assembly issues the Deceleration of the Rights of Man and of Citizen (guarantees equality before the law, a revolutionary government for a sovereign people, and individual freedoms.) - October 5, 1789 some 7,000 women march from Paris to Versailles to demand action (invaded royal apartments, killed some of the royal bodyguards, and searched for the queen) All of these events, the riots, violence, and attempts at reform eventually lead to the establishment of a Constitutional Monarchy. The first constitution in French history was passed in September 1791. THE CONSEQUENCES: - Women were uspst because while the Constitution broadened women's rights to include inheriting property and obtaining financial support for illegitimate childern from fathers, it still excluded women from political office and voting - The constitutional monarchy doesn't last long, eventually it allows for the rise of a military dictatorship with Maximilian Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety in charge.

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

The events that led to the creation of the independent state nation of Haiti constitute the third, and perhaps the most extraordinary, chapter of the revolutionary era in the late eighteenth century. Prior to 1789 Saint-Domingue, the French colony that was to become Haiti, reaped huge profits through a ruthless system of slave-based plantation agriculture. News of the revolution in France lit a powder keg of contradictory aspirations among white planters, free people of color, and slaves. While revolutionary authorities debated how far to extend the rights of man on Saint-Domingue, first free people of color and then enslaved people took matters into their own hands, rising up to claim their freedom. They succeeded, despite invasion by the British and Spanish and Napoleon's bid to reimpose French control. Haiti become the only nation in history to claim its freedom through slave revolt in 1804. Groups of slaves held a series of nighttime meeting to plan a mass insurrection. Revolts began on a few plantation on the night of August 22. Within a few days, the uprising had swept much of the northern plain, creating a slave army. Haiti, the second independent state in the Americas and the first in Latin America, was born from the first successful large-scale slave revolt in history.

National Assembly

The first French Revolutionary legislature, made up of primarily representatives of the third estate and a few from the nobility and clergy, in session from 1789 to 1791. In angry response to the voting issue at the Estates General, in June 1789 delegates of the third estate refused to meet until the king ordered the clergy to sit with them in a single body. On June 17, the third states, which had been joined by a few parish priests, voted to call itself the National Assembly. On June 20th, excluded from their hall because of "repairs", the delegates 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. 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 18,000 troops toward the capital 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 willing to use violence to restore its control.

Declaration of Pillnitz

The kings and nobles of continental Europe, who had first welcomed the Revolution in France as weakening a competing power, now feared its impact. In June 1791 the royal family was arrested after a failed attempt to escape France. To the monarch of Austria and Prussia, the arrest of a crowned monarch was unacceptable. Two months later they issued the Declaration of Pillnitz, proclaiming their willingness to intervene in France to restore Louis XVI's rule if necessary. But the crowned heads of Europe misjudged the situation. 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. 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 Frenchman, kindled by the fire of liberty, armed with the sword, the reason, with eloquence would be able to change to face of the world and make the tyrants tremble on their thrones."

sans-culottes

The laboring poor of Paris, so called because the men wore trousers instead of the knee breeches of the aristocracy and middle class; the word came to refer to the militant radicals of the city. 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 2nd, 1793, armed sans-culottes invaded the Convention and forced its deputies to arrest twenty-nine Girondist deputies for treason. The most fundamental political ideals of the sans-culottes were social equality, economic equality, and popular democracy. They supported the abolition of all the authority and privileges of the monarchy, nobility, and Roman Catholic clergy, the establishment of fixed wages, the implementation of price controls to ensure affordable food and other essentials, and vigilance against counter-revolutionaries.

King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette

The new king that replaced Louis XV as king of France in 1774, a shy 20 year old with good intentions. Taking the throne, he is reported to have said "What I should like most is to be love." An eager to please monarch, Louis waffled on political reform and the economy, and proved unable to quell the rising storm of opposition. Louis XIV's finance minister revived old proposals to impose a general tax on all landed property. Facing imminent bankruptcy, the king tried to reassert his authority. He dismissed the notables and established new taxes by decree The judges of the Parliament 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. In response to the National Assembly, 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 capital to bring the delegates under control, and on July 11, he dismissed his finance minister. The people feared that this would put them at the mercy of aristocratic landowners and grain speculators. Faced with popular violence after the storming of the Bastille, Louis soon announced the reinstatement of his finance minister and the withdrawal of troops from Paris. Marie Antoinette was Louis XVI's wife. She was widely despised for her frivolous and supposedly immoral behavior. The famous line "Let them Eat Cake!" was supposedly what she said when she was told that the people of France were starving, demonstrating her frivolity, which was disliked since the rest of France was pretty much destitute. Suspicions heightened of treason on the part of the French king and queen. On August 10, 1792, a revolutionary crowd attacked the royal palace at the Tuileries, while the royal family fled to the Legislative Assembly. Rather than offering refuge, the Assembly suspended the king from all his functions, imprisoned hum, and called for a constitutional assembly to be elected by universal male suffrage. Louis was executed on January 21, 1793, by guillotine, which the French had recently perfected. Marie Antoinette suffered the same fate later that year.

Anti-Federalists

The opponents of the proposed Constitution and the Federalists (real clever name guys, so original). The Anti-Federalists charged that the framers of the 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. To overcome these objections, the Federalists promised to spell out these basic 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.

The Reign of Terror

The period of time from 1793 to 1794 during which Robespierre's Committee of Public Safety tried and executed thousands suspected of treason and a new revolutionary culture was imposed. The Reign of Terror enforced compliance with republican beliefs and practices. Special courts responsible only to Robespierre's Committee of Public Safety tried "enemies of the nation" for political crimes. Some forty thousand French men and women were executed or died in prison and around three hundred thousand were executed or died in prison and around three hundred thousand were arrested, making Robespierre's Reign of Terror one of the most controversial phases of the Revolution. Presented as a necessary measure to save the republic, the Terror was a weapon directed against all suspected of opposing the revolutionary government. As Robespierre himself put it, "Terror is nothing more than prompt, sever inflexible justice." For many Europeans of the time, however, the Reign of Terror represented a frightening perversion of the ideals of 1789.

Levee en Masse

The policy of military conscription adopted in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789. The concept originated as a French term for mass-conscription during the French Revolutionary Wars, particularly for the period following 16 August 1793. It formed an integral part of the creation of national identity, making it unique from forms of conscription which had existed before this date. The first modern use of levée en masse occurred during the French Revolutionary Wars. Under the Ancien Régime, there had been some conscription (by ballot) to a militia, milice, to supplement the large standing army in times of war. This was unpopular with the peasant communities on which it fell, and was one of their grievances which they expected to be addressed by the French Estates-General when it was convened in 1789 to strengthen the French monarchy. When this instead led to the French Revolution, the milice was duly abolished by the National Assembly. In response to the desperate situation in French, at war with European states, and insurrection, Paris petitioners demanded that the Convention enact a Levée en Masse. In response, Convention member Bertrand Barère asked the Convention to "decree the solemn declaration that the French people was going to rise as a whole for the defense of its independence." The Convention fulfilled Barere's request on August 16, when they stated that the Levee en masse would be enacted.

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?

This wasn't quite what Louis XVI and some of his advisers had intended and they began to think in terms of dissolving the Assembly. The king dismissed his reforming chief minister and troops were sent to surround Paris. Popular reaction was not long in coming. The bourgeoisie formed themselves into an armed "National Guard" while, on 14 July, the sans culotte crowds stormed the Bastille. Power in Paris passed into the hands of the armed, revolutionary bourgeoisie. July 14 has traditionally been regarded as the date that the French Revolution, as the seizure of power by the bourgeoisie, took place. Another, perhaps better, case can be made out for 6 October of the same year. This was the date when, following a march of women, accompanied by members of the National Guard, from Paris to the royal palace at Versailles to demand bread, the king was forced to recognize the power and legitimacy of the National Assembly by accompanying it back to Paris. The old royal administration then collapsed throughout France and power at regional and local level also passed into the hands of the bourgeoisie.

Burgeoisie

Wealthy educated commoners, members of the third estate. The modern French word bourgeois derived from the Old French burgeis (walled city), which derived from bourg (market town), from the Old Frankish burg (town). The bourgeoisie emerged as a historical and political phenomenon in the 11th century when the bourgs of Central and Western Europe developed into cities dedicated to commerce. This urban expansion was possible thanks to economic concentration due to the appearance of protective self-organisation into guilds. Guilds arose when individual businessmen (such as craftsmen, artisans and merchants) conflicted with their rent-seeking feudal landlords who demanded greater rents than previously agreed. During the 17th and 18th centuries, 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.