Enlightenment 4

1. All of the estates agreed that royal absolutism should give way to constitutional monarchy, with laws and taxes requiring the consent of the Estates General meeting regularly. Future individual liberties would have to be guaranteed by law and that the economic position of the parish clergy would have to be improved. Reforms were needed, such as the abolition of in-ternal trade barriers. The Estates General of 1614 had sat as three separate houses and any action had required the agreement of at least two houses, virtually guaranteeing control by the nobility and clergy. The Parlement of Paris ruled that the Estates General should sit sepa-rately. Middle-class intellectuals and some liberal nobles denounced this and demanded a single assembly dominated by representative of the third estates to ensure fundamental re-forms. In May 1789, the twelve hundred delegates of the estates debated and were imme-diately deadlocked, as delegates of the third estate refused to transact any business until the king ordered the clergy and nobility to sit with them in a single body. On June 17, the third estate voted to call itself the National Assembly, and on June 20, after they were excluded from their hall because of “repairs,” they moved to a tennis court where they swore the Oath of the Tennis Court and pledged not to disband until they had written a constitution.

2. The 1788-grain harvest was extremely poor and the price of bread soared. By July 1789, it had climbed to 8 sous per pound in the provinces (with 4 sous in Paris), much higher than the poor could afford at 2 sous per pound. Food became so expensive that the demand for man-ufactured goods collapsed, leaving thousands of artisans and small traders out of work. The citizens of Paris believed that they should have steady work and enough bread at fair prices to survive. The dismissal of the king’s finance minister and rumors that the king’s troops would sack the city scared and angered people. On July 13, the people began to seize wea-pons for the defense of the city, and on July 14, several hundred stormed the Bastille. With cannons and firearms, the revolutionaries seized the prison, killing the governor of the prison and the mayor of Paris. The marquis de Lafayette was appointed commander of the city’s armed forces. The king was forced to recall the finance minister and call off his troops. The uprising had broken the power monopoly of the royal army and saved the National Assembly. Peasants rose up in spontaneous, violent, and effective insurrection against their lords. Pea-sants sacked manor houses, burned feudal documents, reinstated traditional village practices, undid recent enclosures, and seized forests. The fear of vagabonds and outlaws created the Great Fear. On August 4, 1789, serfdom, exclusive hunting rights for nobles, fees for justice, village monopolies, and the right to make peasants work on roads were abolished.

3. Women made garments and beautiful luxury items for the aristocracy, but when they left Versailles for foreign lands, the demand for luxuries stopped. The church was no longer able to give its traditional grants of food and money to the poor. Increasing unemployment and hunger culminated on October 5, when seven thousand women marched from Paris to Ver-sailles to demand action. They invaded the royal apartments, slaughtered some royal body-guards, and searched for Marie Antoinette. The next day, the king, queen, and their son were forced to return to Paris. They were mocked and insulted on their way back.

4. After the king was sent back to Paris to September 1791, the liberal revolution was consoli-dated. The National Assembly abolished the French nobility as a legal order and established a constitutional monarchy, which Louis XVI accepted in July 1790. The king remained the head of state, but all lawmaking power was given to the National Assembly, which was elected by the economic upper half of males. New laws broadened women’s rights to seek divorce, in-herit property, and obtain financial support from fathers for illegitimate children. Women were excluded from voting and holding office due to sexism and distraction. The provinces were redrawn into 83 approximately equal sizes. The system of weights and measures was reformed in 1793. Monopolies, guilds, and workers combinations were prohibited, and inter-nal trade barriers were abolished. Religious freedom was granted to French Jews and Protes-tants. The Catholic church’s property was nationalized and monasteries were abolished. All former church property was used as collateral to guarantee a new paper currency, the assig-nats, and then sold to strengthen the state’s finances, which eventually trickled down to the peasants. A national church was established, with priests chosen by voters and forced to take a loyalty oath. Many sincere Christians were angry over the religious reorganization of France. Louis XVI accepted the final version of the completed constitution in September 1791.

5. The revolution created excitement and division in Europe and the United States. Liberals and radicals saw the triumph of liberty over despotism. The British hoped that the French could inspire a fundamental reordering of their political system that allowed all people to be in-volved in government. English conservative Edmund Burke published in 1790 Reflections on the Revolution in France, defending inherited privileges and the English monarchy and aristo-cracy. He glorified the Parliament and predicted that there would be chaos and tyranny in France. English writer Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Man in 1790, attacking Burke. In 1792, she published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, arguing for coeducation that would improve women and their talents. The kings and nobles of conti-nental Europe welcomed the revolution as weakening a strong power. After Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were arrested for trying to flee France in June 1791, Austria and Prussia is-sued the Declaration of Pillnitz, stating that they could intervene in France in certain circums-tances.

6. The National Assembly disbanded and allowed none of its member to be eligible for election to the new Legislative Assembly. When the new body was formed in October 1791, it had younger and less cautious delegates but they were still prosperous, well-educated, middle-class men. The Assembly was liberal and distrusted monarchs. The delegates were very patri-otic and in April 1792, declared war on Francis II of Austria. Prussia joined Austria in the Aus-trian Netherlands, and French forces fled the armies of the First Coalition at their first en-counter. The failed war caused a wave of patriotic fervor in France, with the Legislative As-sembly declaring the country in danger. Rumors of treason by the king and queen caused, on August 10, 1792, a revolutionary crowd to attack the royal palace at the Tuileries and capture it after a battle with the Swiss Guards. The royal family fled to the Legislative Assembly, which suspended the king’s functions, imprisoned him, and called for a National Convention to be elected by universal male suffrage.

7. After the royal family was imprisoned, the September Massacres occurred after wild stories that said imprisoned counter-revolutionary aristocrats and priests were plotting with the al-lied invaders. Angry crowds invaded the prisons of Paris and killed half the men and women they found. In late September 1792, the National Convention proclaimed France a republic. It adopted a revolutionary calendar that eliminated saints’ days and renamed the days and the months after the seasons of the year, informalized the language, and established democratic festivals. All of the members of it were republicans, and at the beginning, almost all were Ja-cobins. Control of the Convention was increasingly contested between the Girondists and the Mountain, led by Robespierre and Georges Jacques Danton. Most of the indecisive Conven-tion members sat in the Plain and floated between the factions. The National Convention convicted Louis XVI of treason by a wide margin and then sentenced him to death by a nar-row margin in January 1793. Both factions supported war, and the Prussians were stopped at the Battle of Valmy on September 20, 1792, saving the republic. The French armies invaded Savoy and captured Nice. Another army invaded the Rhineland and captured Frankfurt. Another army won the first major battle at Jemappes and, by November 1792, was occupying all of the Austrian Netherlands. In February 1793, the National Convention declared war on Britain, Holland, and Spain as well. The First Coalition drove the French out of the Austrian Netherlands, and peasants in western France revolted against being drafted into the army. The National Convention evolved into a political struggle between the Girondists and the Mountain, with each group convinced that the other was trying to overturn social order. The laboring poor of Paris, the sans-culottes, demanded by the spring of 1793 that they be guar-anteed their daily bread. With the military defeat, peasant revolt, and hatred of the Girond-ists, the Mountain joined with the sans-culottes and forced the Convention to arrest 31 Gi-rondist deputies for treason on June 2. Robespierre and others from the Mountain joined the Committee of Public Safety, which help dictatorial power to deal with the emergency. These developments caused revolts in leading provincial cities, where moderates demanded a de-centralized government. Revolts spread and by July 1793, only the areas around Paris were firmly held by the central government.

8. The French government used a planned economy, revolutionary terror, and modern national-ism in a total war effort to win back their losses. Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety collaborated with the patriotic and democratic sans-culottes to ensure fair prices and a moral economic order by establishing a planned economy with egalitarian social overtones. The Committee decreed the maximum allowable prices for many products, allowing for some price management. Rationing was introduced and quality was controlled. Brown bread was the only allowed kind of bread. A kind of socialism was introduced when artisans were told what to produce and when to deliver, strict economic goals, nationalization of small workshops, and reinquisition of raw materials and grain from peasants. The Reign of Terror solidified the home front by trying rebels and enemies of the nation for political crimes. It scared those who opposed the French government. France’s victories were also attributable to the explosive power of patriotic dedication to a national state and a national mission, known as modern nationalism. After August 1793, all unmarried young men were subject to the draft, and by January 1794, France had about 800,000 soldiers in fourteen armies. The armies were well trained, well equipped, constantly indoctrinated, and led by young, impetuous generals who were deft. French generals used mass assaults at bayonet point to overwhelm the enemy.

9. The Reign of Terror occurred from 1793 and 1794 and was led by special revolutionary courts responsible only to Robespierre’s Committee of Public Safety. It solidified the home front by executing rebels and enemies of the nation. It was not against any single class and created fear in those who opposed the revolutionary government. The local courts ignored normal legal procedures and judges severely with about 40,000 French dead and another 300,000 suspects imprisoned. For many, the Reign of Terror represented a terrifying perversion of the generous ideals that had existed in 1789 and made France appear foolish to replace a king with a bloody dictatorship.

10. The Committee of Public Safety tried to establish an ideal democratic republic where justice would reign and there would be neither rich nor poor. In March 1794, the Committee ex-ecuted many of the angry men who had been criticizing Robespierre for being soft on the wealthy and who were led by the radical social democrat Jacques Hébert. Two weeks later, several of Robespierre’s collaborators, including Danton, were executed. Fearful of their lives, a group of radicals and moderates in the Convention captured Robespierre when he tried to speak to the National Convention on 9 Thermidor (July 27, 1794) and executed him the next day with many of his supporters following him. In the Thermidorian reaction, the respectable middle-class lawyers and professionals who had led the liberal revolution of 1789 reasserted their authority. The National Convention abolished economic controls, printed more paper currency, and let prices rise. It restricted the local political organizations were the sans-culottes had their strength. Wealthy bankers and newly rich speculators celebrated with an orgy of self-indulgence and luxury. Without economic controls and with heavy inflation, the working poor suffered and rioted in early 1795, but were quickly put down by the Convention.

11. The Directory was a five-man executive of a reorganized legislative assembly that was estab-lished in 1795. It supported French military expansion abroad. The armies reduced unem-ployment at home and were able to live off the conquered territories. However, it created disgust with war and starvation, and in the national elections of 1797, many conservative and even monarchist deputies who promised peace were elected. The Directory was afraid of these appointments, used the army to nullify the elections, and began to govern dictatorially until in 1799 when Napoleon Bonaparte ended the Directory in a coup d’état.