Violence In The French Revolution Essay

Abolishing the Ancient Regime: Violence in the French Revolution

The French Revolution was a revolt of the people against higher authority. In 1789, French society was split into three Estates that showed class distinction from the rich to the poor. The First Estate was made up of the clergy, the Second Estate was made up of the nobility, and the Third Estate made up the majority of the population being commoners and peasants. The Third Estate had very few rights and wanted to be treated fairly in tax collection, votes, personal liberties, and proprietary rights. In general, the Third Estate wanted equality for everyone. However, the problem arose from King Louis XVI’s failed attempt at granting the people of France their rights of justice,

Violence was an effective means of achieving the goals in the French Revolution because it eradicated the privileges of the First and Second Estate and ended the monarchy’s reign, which granted the people's goals of freedom and equality.

Although the Storming of the Bastille did not achieve any revolutionary goals, it was still an act of violence that encouraged other revolutionary activities into taking effective action against the government. On July 14, 1789 angry parisians came storming towards the Bastille, a prison under the power of royal authority, to revolt against the monarchy. Before the Storming initiated, the Third Estate were undergoing through a lot of suffering either from starvation or from the inability of paying taxes. In fact, they created a list of grievances that focused on

The Third Estate wanted to achieve the goal of Article number six in the Declaration of the Rights of Man which states that, “It must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes. All citizens being equal in the eye of the law, are equally eligible to all public positions and occupations.” In other words, equal rights in reference to law means that each citizen no matter what social class, is guaranteed equality. What provoked the Great Fear was a climate of economic desperation, with countless number of beggars, a costly price of bread, and a paranoia of aristocrats coming to take charge. In response fearful peasants and villagers organized militias to prepare for an outbreak . Others attacked and burned manor houses, sometimes to look for grain but the peasants mostly wanted to destroy records of the due dates of land-payments. The National Assembly took advantage by “putting into law what the peasants had accomplished with the torch--the destruction of feudal remnants.” During the uprisings, the people also caused “aristocrats seeking to restore calm in the countryside,” to surrender “their special privileges. The Assembly maintained that the feudal system had been utterly destroyed.” Therefore, peasants and farmers who had been suffering under high prices and unfair class separation, were finally put at justice when they were able to get rid of