The French Revolution

This is Unit Seven of Western Civilization Two, part one of two: the French Revolution from bankruptcy to the Terror, the exam's heaviest band. Unit six ended with the reasons for the society of orders removed. This unit is what happened when France found there were none left, and its governing idea, which part two pays off, is a chain in which each link forced the next. Bankruptcy made the king ask, and asking ended absolutism. The Third Estate became the nation, Paris took the Bastille, the villages burned their debt ledgers, and the Assembly abolished privilege and declared rights. Then the king fled, the radicals declared war, defeat made a republic, the republic killed the king, and invasion and revolt made the Committee of Public Safety and the guillotine. Part one carries the chain to the Vendée; part two ends it at Thermidor and works the procedures. By the end you will be able to state the causes. To trace seventeen eighty-nine. To describe the liberal revolution and equality's limits. To describe the monarchy's failure. To describe the republic. And to describe the Terror.

Four entries on what the Revolution was and why it came: five years, a treasury paying sixty percent to interest, nobles who held a third of the land, and a victory that bankrupted the crown.

Five years, and the stage set for a century.

WC2 0601 Five Years That Changed Everything: What the Revolution Was

In about five years France went from a Catholic absolute monarchy to a secular republic with universal manhood suffrage, a new calendar, new weights and measures, and the aim of conquering Europe for freedom. Its most radical aims failed in the short term, but the stage was set for the nineteenth century, the anchor says. The exam's heaviest band: learn the dates.

Sixty percent to interest.

WC2 0602 A Century of War, Sixty Percent to Interest, and a Tax System That Could Not Reach the Wealth

A century of war, lost every time but the American, was funded by private loans at punishing interest. Sixty percent of revenue went to interest, the anchor's figure, a ratio and never a sum, and taxes fell on peasant land while nobles, church and commerce went untaxed. Britain's Bank against France's moneylenders, the contrast unit two drew.

Privilege, not poverty.

WC2 0603 Two Hundred Thousand Nobles and a Third of the Land

About two hundred thousand nobles in a population of twenty-six million, the anchor's count, held every senior post in administration, army, navy and church, about a third of the land outright, and lordly rights over most of the rest. They blocked every reform that would have taxed them, while Versailles's pageantry continued and the treasury emptied. Privilege, not poverty, is the anchor's cause.

Louis the Sixteenth inherits Louis the Fourteenth's bill.

WC2 0604 The American War: The Victory That Bankrupted France

France's one won war of the century, the American, brought no economic benefit and pushed the state to bankruptcy. From the early seventeen eighties Louis the Sixteenth's finance ministers proposed overhauls; city governments and nobles shouted them down. By seventeen eighty-seven only taxing the nobility could work. Unit four's revolt became this unit's revolution.

Six entries on seventeen eighty-nine: the Estates General revived, the election and the bread price, Sieyès's question, the Tennis Court Oath, the Bastille, and the Great Fear.

Absolutism ended when the king had to ask.

WC2 0605 Louis XVI, the Notables, and the Estates General Revived

An Assembly of Notables refused new revenue, so Louis revived the Estates General, last met in sixteen fourteen: the first formal negotiation with subjects in the history of French absolutism, three estates bargaining over taxes, with no living person experienced in it. Revived for money, like unit two's Long Parliament. Absolutism ended when the king had to ask.

Hunger and hope together.

WC2 0606 The Election of 1789, the Cahiers, and the Price of Bread

The spring election of seventeen eighty-nine was surprisingly democratic, most adult men voting, and each estate drew up lists of grievances, the cahiers: noble burdens, representation, hopes of royal help. Bread prices soared after the bad harvests of eighty-seven and eighty-eight, and the witness has Paris near riot over bread in October. Hunger and hope arrived together.

Everything, shackled.

WC2 0607 By Estate or by Head: Sieyès and the Third Estate

Voting by estate let the first two outvote the third; voting by head let the Third Estate, most of France, win. Sieyès's pamphlet asked what the Third Estate was and answered, in the anchor's caption, everything, an everything shackled by the privileged order. The procedural question was the constitutional one, and part two reads the pamphlet.

An oath on a tennis court.

WC2 0608 The National Assembly and the Tennis Court Oath, June 20, 1789

When the king confirmed voting by estate in June, the Third Estate, joined by sympathetic priests and nobles, declared itself the National Assembly. Locked out of its hall on June twentieth, by accident the witness says, it swore on a tennis court not to disperse until France had a constitution. The anchor calls it the Revolution's true beginning.

An arsenal, not a symbol.

WC2 0609 The Bastille, July 14

Louis ordered the estates to join the Assembly, then summoned troops at the queen's and conservatives' urging. Paris rose from July twelfth; on the fourteenth crowds overwhelmed the Bastille, a prison and arsenal, and killed its guards, while royal troops defected. By July sixteenth the army was unreliable and the king yielded. An arsenal, not a symbol, is what the crowd wanted.

Ledgers burned, and no copies.

WC2 0610 Lafayette, the National Guard, and the Great Fear

Lafayette took command of a new National Guard, and the king reluctantly sided with the Assembly. In the countryside the Great Fear spread: peasants attacked manors and burned the ledgers of their debts, of which, the anchor notes, there were no copies. Paris made the Assembly; the villages made its first law, and the witness says August's decree answered the peasant revolts.

Six entries on the liberal revolution: privilege abolished in a night, the Declaration, church lands and titles, equality reaching Protestants and Jews, refused to women, and forced by slaves.

A thousand years in one night.

WC2 0611 August 4: Feudal Privilege Abolished

On August fourth, seventeen eighty-nine, the Assembly abolished feudal privilege, sweeping away seigneurial rights in the witness's phrase, nobles proposing the abolition of their own dues; ten days later it ended the sale of offices. A thousand years of lordship went in one night's session, abolished in principle, with redemption payments and disputes to follow.

Born free and equal in rights.

WC2 0612 The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, August 26

On August twenty-sixth the Assembly issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen: men born free and equal in rights, sovereignty in the nation, law as the expression of the general will. The witness calls it principles, not a constitution. The anchor credits American models, and the course says models, since the anchor's American Bill of Rights came later.

Individuals, not orders.

WC2 0613 Church Lands Seized, Titles Abolished, Liberty Equality Fraternity

In October seventeen eighty-nine church lands were seized and auctioned to fund the state; in early ninety noble titles were abolished. Government now dealt with individuals, not orders; differences were of wealth, not rank; legitimate power belonged to the nation. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity was the slogan of the whole, and equality meant equality before the law, the anchor's phrase, not of condition.

Equality's momentum.

WC2 0614 Equality's Momentum: Protestants 1789, Jews 1791

The Assembly was all male, almost all Catholic, all white. Yet the logic of equality gained momentum, an argument the anchor takes from Lynn Hunt and the course attributes to her: Protestants recognized by the end of seventeen eighty-nine, Jews made citizens in September ninety-one, religion a private matter irrelevant to loyalty. More than separation of church and state, the anchor says.

Denied to the women who stormed the Bastille.

WC2 0615 Equality Denied: Women, de Gouges, and Wollstonecraft

Women stormed the Bastille, yet the Assembly never debated their rights. Olympe de Gouges answered with a Declaration of the Rights of Woman in seventeen ninety-one, and Wollstonecraft's Vindication of ninety-two made women's liberation the key to dismantling hierarchy for all. De Gouges was executed and women's clubs were shut; neither found sympathy for a century, the anchor says.

Granted because it could not be refused.

WC2 0616 St. Domingue: A Slave Revolt Forces Abolition, 1791 to 1794

In St. Domingue, where slaves were ninety percent of the population by the anchor's count, the slaves learned of the promise and rose in summer seventeen ninety-one. French authority collapsed, and slavery was abolished in February ninety-four because force could not hold it; granted, the anchor says, because it could not be refused. The witness adds Louverture and Haiti's independence in eighteen-oh-four.

Three entries on how the monarchy failed: two events the witness names, the flight to Varennes, and a constitution overtaken by war.

The king to Paris, the church under the state.

WC2 0617 The October Days and the Civil Constitution of the Clergy

The anchor says women forcibly moved the royal family from Versailles to Paris; the witness names the March on Versailles of October fifth, seventeen eighty-nine, over bread. The anchor omits the Civil Constitution of the Clergy of July ninety, which made priests state employees. The king in Paris, the church under the state; both names rest on the witness texts.

Recognized from a coin.

WC2 0618 Varennes, June 1791: The King's Prestige Destroyed

In June seventeen ninety-one the royal family fled toward the border and was caught at Varennes, the witness's name, recognized, the anchor says supposedly, from a coin. Correspondence with foreign monarchs surfaced, and the king's prestige was destroyed: a constitutional monarchy with a king who had tried to leave it. The flight, not the execution, ended the monarchy's credibility.

War as the Revolution's accelerator.

WC2 0619 The Constitution of 1791 and the Preemptive War of 1792

The Constitution of October seventeen ninety-one took effect with the king under house arrest. Austria and Prussia called for his restoration; radicals pushed a preemptive war, declared on Austria in April ninety-two, and Prussia joined Austria. Inflation and rural hunger ran through it all. The Revolution declared the war; the monarchies had only threatened.

Four entries on the republic: the factions the witness names, September ninety-two, the king's execution, and the twelve men who ruled France.

Feuillants, Girondins, the Mountain.

WC2 0620 Girondins, Jacobins, and Sans-Culottes

The anchor names none of them, so the witness does: the Jacobin clubs split into Feuillants, who wanted the constitutional monarchy, Girondins, moderate republicans, and Montagnards, the Mountain, the radicals allied with the sans-culottes, the working-class Parisians who drove the Revolution forward, with Robespierre, Danton and Marat on the Mountain. This entry rests on the witness texts, not the anchor.

The first republic since Rome, the anchor says.

WC2 0621 September 1792: The Republic and Universal Manhood Suffrage

The National Convention, the first French assembly elected by universal male suffrage, declared the republic on September twenty-second, seventeen ninety-two, the witness's date, after the September Massacres in Paris's prisons. The anchor calls it the first major experiment in democracy since the Roman Republic, and says a new constitution where the witness says the Convention's proclamation.

A closer vote than the guillotine suggests.

WC2 0622 January 1793: The King Executed

After a close vote the Convention executed Louis the Sixteenth in January seventeen ninety-three, a vote the witness says divided the Girondins from the Mountain. Britain and the Dutch joined the war, and by mid-year invasion fears, shortages and royalist risings pressed on the republic from every side.

Total war's first draft.

WC2 0623 The Committee of Public Safety and the Levée en Masse

From September seventeen ninety-three to July ninety-four twelve radicals on the Committee of Public Safety ruled France. The levée en masse mobilized the whole nation and held Austria and Prussia; price controls, requisitions, currency rules and police power followed. The Committee's mandate was the emergency, and victory would end it.

Four entries on the Terror: the Incorruptible and his machine, the metric system and the calendar, the numbers, and the Vendée.

Execution made mechanical and public.

WC2 0624 Robespierre and the Guillotine

Robespierre, called the Incorruptible, dominated the Committee. The guillotine, named for the doctor who proposed it, made execution mechanical and public. Suspects were arrested by category, and militants terrorized the very peasants they claimed to represent, the anchor's judgment, attributed. The biggest battles of the Terror were against royalists, not foreigners.

Year One, ten-day weeks, temples of reason.

WC2 0625 The Metric System, the Revolutionary Calendar, and De-Christianization

The metric system, the anchor says, was the Revolution's most successful and lasting change. The calendar restarted at Year One on September twenty-second, seventeen ninety-two, with ten-day weeks. Crosses came down, churches became temples of reason, kings were disinterred, and Robespierre installed a supreme being. The course names one month, Thermidor; the anchor's other mappings are slips.

Ten months, one committee, one machine.

WC2 0626 The Terror by the Numbers

The anchor puts the Terror at thirty-five to fifty-five thousand executed or dead in prison, and half a million imprisoned, three percent of adults. Suspects were arrested on category and denunciation, and trials were summary. The figures are the anchor's, attributed, and historians' ranges vary.

The largest rising, and the republic's revenge.

WC2 0627 The Vendée

Early in seventeen ninety-three a peasant army rose for king and church in the Vendée, the largest royalist insurrection, and was beaten by summer. The republic's revenge burned villages and, by the anchor's figure, killed over one hundred thousand. The witness counts the Vendée among the Terror's causes; the anchor calls it close to genocide, a characterization attributed.

Look at what you can now do. You can state what five years changed, and the causes: sixty percent to interest, a third of the land in noble hands, and a victory that emptied the treasury. You can trace seventeen eighty-nine from the Estates General through the cahiers, Sieyès, the Oath of June twentieth, the Bastille and the Great Fear. You can describe August fourth and the Declaration, church lands and titles, and equality's momentum to Protestants and Jews, its refusal to women, and its extraction by St. Domingue. You can describe the October Days, Varennes, the constitution and the war of ninety-two. You can describe the factions, the republic of September, the execution of January, and the Committee. And you can describe Robespierre, Year One, the numbers as the anchor's, and the Vendée. Part two ends the chain at Thermidor, works five procedures, and asks how the Revolution radicalized.