The French Revolution

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The later 18th century was a time of crisis for the old regimes of Europe and their economic systems and political agitation sometimes breaking out into revolts. English Industrial Revolution vaulted Britain to the fore. France was the most powerful and the most typical of the old aristocratic absolute monarchies of Europe. (lower taxes off backs of lower classes).

Major inequities, inflation and lack of food, very minimal reforms, rising aspirations of middle classes -bourgeoise. Among 23 million Frenchmen, there were 400,000 who formed the nobility -and army officers and clergy.

French Revolution extraordinarily important:

occurred in the most powerful, largest and populous states of Europe

2. It alone, of all the revolutions, was a mass social revolution and immeasurably more radical than any other (including the American). For instance, Tom Paine who was revolutionary in America was seen as a moderate when he went to France.

French Revolution was ecumenical--its armies set out to revolutionize the world.

It became a landmark in all the countries it touched: Belguin, Austria, Spain, Prussia, Italy and Russia

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France had to declare bankruptcy after the American Revolution--war and debt helped bring down the monarchy. King, in 1787, called the Estates General, an assembly of noblemen buried since 1614. Thus the Revolution becan with an aristocratic attempt to recapture the state. "Men born and live free and equal under the law." Not democratic, but constitutional. The King was not King of France, but King of the French!!

1789--Fall of the Bastille--a state prison--symbol of royal authority, oppression and privilege; July 14 even today is a national holiday in France "Bastille Day."

Tom Paine, Declaration of the Right sof Men and Citizens (1789), a manifesto against the hierarchical society of noble privilege, but not in favor of democracy, does provide for social distinctions. A belief in constitutionalism. Sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. (In the US, in "we the people). "The People " identified with the nation was a radical concept.

Aided by bad harvests of 1788 and 1789, so that a riotous people stood behind the Third Estate.

Jacobins= radical revolutionaries

San culottes=urban masses of laboring poor

Feudalism abolished in 1793

Events:

-1791 moderate bourgeoisie victorious (Metric system, emancipation of Jews)

war breaks out with Britain and other monarchies

-4 Jacobins..."Alon les enfates de la patrie...Le Marseilles, "Egalite, liberte, fraternite (ended by rise of Napoleon. Regin of Terror, including escaping King Louis XVI, Danton, then Robespierre, 17,000 to guillotine -"Tale of Two Cities" by Dickens.

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