The Course of the French Revolution

Facing serious crises (see handout on causes of the French Revolution) King Louis XVI decided to pass a sweeping tax that members of each social class would have to pay. The nobles and clergy flat out rejected this tax. They said that a King could not do anything this drastic unless he had the approval of the Estates General, France’s representative body that had not met since 1614. Because he was being ignored, the King gave in and called for a meeting of the Estates General in 1788.

All of France rushed to the polls to elect members from each of the three estates. When the representatives from the three Estates met at Versailles there was immediate controversy about how the Estates General would make decisions. The first and second Estates (the clergy and the nobles) wanted each Estate to meet and vote separately. Any law would require a vote of two Estates—an arrangement that would allow the clergy and nobles to always outvote the third Estate. The third Estate wanted all three Estates to meet together and vote as one. When this problem could not be solved, the third Estate (representing the common people and the bourgeoisie) declared themselves to be the official government of France and called themselves the National Assembly.

When the National Assembly later began to meet, they found the King had locked them out of the hotel where their meeting hall was. The angry National Assembly met on an indoor tennis court at Versailles and took the Tennis Court Oath. This oath was a promise that the representatives of the Third Estate would not go home until they had a new constitution and a new government. Meanwhile, an angry mob of women marched on Versailles to demand bread. They took the King and his family back to Paris to live there. Another angry mob attacked the Bastille, a prison of the king in Paris. This storming of the Bastille is France’s independence day, July 14, 1789.

The King finally gave in and the National Assembly created a new constitution. This constitution outlined France’s new government, a constitutional monarchy. They later wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Man, a document that declared that all men are equal.

This period of the Revolution was the most productive. It permanently ended feudalism in France. Serfdom and feudal payments to manorial lords were made illegal. Mandatory payments to the Catholic Church were ended. French society entered the modern world.

As the revolution progressed, different factions, or groups, were formed within the National Assembly. These different groups had conflicting ideas about how the new government should be. There were radicals, like the Jacobins, who wanted a republic. Then there were moderates, such as the Girondin, who wanted a constitutional monarchy. These tensions became worse as France found itself at war with several of its neighboring countries.

Amidst these tensions the king and queen attempted to flee Paris and go into a neighboring country in June, 1791. Unfortunately, he was recognized in the town of Varennes near the French boarder and returned to Paris. In January 1793, the King of France was executed for treason. A few months later his wife, Queen Marie Antoinette, was executed too.

With these executions, and the war going on with other countries, the French Revolution entered its most violent phase, a time from 1793-1794 known as the Reign of Terror. Robespierre and Danton were powerful leaders of the revolution at this time. The Committee for Public Safety was created, with Robespierre as its leader, to find aristocratic traitors among the French nobles. Trials were short and very little evidence was necessary for conviction. People on trial were either acquitted (let go) or sent directly to the guillotine. Thousands of people went to the guillotine, many of them innocent. The reason for these emergency measures was that France was at war and the leaders of the French Revolution were paranoid that traitors were everywhere.

During the Reign of Terror Robespierre tried to cut France off completely from its past and establish a new order. The Roman Catholic Church was violently attacked and a new religion, the Cult of the Supreme Being, was created by Robespierre to take its place. A new calendar was created with new names for the months. The calendar had ten months and each week had ten days. The metric system was created as a more rational system of measuring.

When it became clear that France was winning over its enemies, some people suggested that the harsh measures of the Reign of Terror be dropped. Danton was one of them. As he became more popular, Robespierre feared that he would become more powerful than him. So Danton was arrested, was denied the chance to defend himself at his trial, and sent to the guillotine. Finally, some other members of the Committee for Public Safety began to resent Robespierre and conspired against him. In July of 1794, Robespierre and 21 of his followers went to the guillotine.

After the end of the Reign of Terror, there was a cooling down period—a reaction against all the killing and blood of the Terror. But in1795, an angry mob of people began rioting in Paris. A young general returning from war, Napoleon Bonaparte, turned his cannons on the rioters and put them down. A few years later he would proclaim himself the emperor (an absolute ruler!) of France and the revolution would end. Ten years of bloody revolution were over (1789-1799) but Europe was just getting ready for another bloody time—the wars of Napoleon.