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Cf. http://shanawiki.wikispaces.com/Honors+World+History+II+Fall+2010+Chapter+10+Test+Prep+Page
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Chapter 11 The French Revolution and Napoleon, 1789–1815
Section 1 The French Revolution Begins
Poverty and deep social divisions were the backdrop of the French Revolution. On the eve of the revolution, financial crisis gripped the government of Louis XVI. Rather than accept higher taxes, the commoners in France's legislative body, the Estates-General, broke off to form a National Assembly. Anticipating an attack by the king's forces, commoners then stormed the Bastille prison, marking the start of the Revolution. The new Assembly took control of the Catholic Church and adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. The document was inspired in part by the American Declaration of Independence and Constitution. The Assembly then wrote a constitution establishing a limited monarchy and a Legislative Assembly. France was soon at war with Austria, where some feared the revolution might spread. Louis XVI was taken captive by the Paris Commune. The Commune called for a National Convention and forced the revolution into a more violent phase.
We can consider the "Causes of the French Revolution."
To cover the entire French Revolution is a lofty task but to deal with the subject as best we can there is a good reference in the "Detailed Guide to the Revolution."
One of the most interesting characters of the period is "Marie Antoinette."
Or, alternatively, we can listen to "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution" in song.
If someone is studying French, perhaps they can translate the anthem of the republican Revolution:
The Marseillaise (War Song for the Army of the Rhine)
Marseillaise
(Chant de guerre pour l'armée du Rhin)
Allons enfants de la patrie!
Le jour de gloire est arrivé;
Contre nous de la tyrannie
L'étendard sanglant est levé.
L'étendard sanglant est levé.
Entendez-vous dans les campagnes
Mugir ces féroces soldats?
Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras
Egorger vos fils, vos compagnes!
Refrain:
Aux armes, citoyens, formez vos bataillons,
Marchez, marchez, qu'un sang impur
abreuve nos sillons.
Que veut cet horde d'esclaves,
De traîtres, de rois conjurés?
Pour qui ces ignobles entraves,
Ces fers dès longtemps préparés?
Ces fers dès longtemps préparés?
Francais! Pour nous, ah quel outrage!
Quels transports il doit exciter!
C'est nous qu'on ose méditer
De rendre à l'antique esclavage?
Refrain
Amour sacré de la patrie,
Conduis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs
Liberté, Liberté chérie!
Combats avec tes défenseurs
Combats avec tes défenseurs
Sous nos drapeaux que la Victoire
Accourt à tes mâles accents:
Que tes ennemis expirants
Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire
Refrain
Refrain
One of the most arresting images of the Revolution, no pun intended, is the guillotine.
Objectives
*Describe the social divisions of France’s old order.
*List reasons for France’s economic troubles in 1789.
*Explain why Louis XVI called the Estates-General and summarize what resulted.
*Understand why Parisians stormed the Bastille.
Witness History
The Loss of Blood Begins (Audio)
On July 14, 1789, after a daylong hunting expedition, King Louis XVI returned to his palace in Versailles. Hours earlier, armed Parisians had attacked the Bastille. They had cut the chains of the prison drawbridge, crushing a member of the crowd, and poured into the courtyard. Chaos ensued as shots rang out, blood was spattered, and heads were paraded down the streets on spikes. When Louis heard the news, he exclaimed, “Then it’s a revolt?” “No, sire,” replied the duke bearing the news, “it’s a revolution!” The French Revolution had begun. Witness History relates the fall of the Bastille.
The Conquerors of the Bastille before the Hotel de Ville, painted by Paul Delaroche
Chapter Focus Question
What were the causes and effects of the French Revolution, and how did the revolution lead to the Napoleonic era?
Fall of the Bastille
On July 14, 1789, the city of Paris seized the spotlight from the National Assembly meeting in Versailles. The streets buzzed with rumors that royal troops were going to occupy the capital. More than 800 Parisians assembled outside the Bastille, a grim medieval fortress used as a prison for political and other prisoners. The crowd demanded weapons and gunpowder believed to be stored there.
The commander of the Bastille refused to open the gates and opened fire on the crowd. In the battle that followed, many people were killed. Finally, the enraged mob broke through the defenses. They killed the commander and five guards and released the handful of prisoners who were being held there, but found no weapons.
The Bastille was a symbol to the people of France representing years of abuse by the monarchy. The storming of and subsequent fall of the Bastille was a wake-up call to Louis XVI. Unlike any other riot or short-lived protest, this event posed a challenge to the sheer existence of the regime. Since 1880, the French have celebrated Bastille Day annually as their national independence day.
Background to the Revolution
The Three Estates
During the Middle Ages, the Church had exerted great influence throughout Christian Europe. In 1789, the French clergy still enjoyed enormous wealth and privilege. The Church owned about 10 percent of the land, collected tithes, and paid no direct taxes to the state. High Church leaders such as bishops and abbots were usually nobles who lived very well. Parish priests, however, often came from humble origins and might be as poor as their peasant congregations.
The First Estate did provide some social services. Nuns, monks, and priests ran schools, hospitals, and orphanages. But during the Enlightenment, philosophes targeted the Church for reform. They criticized the idleness of some clergy, the Church’s interference in politics, and its intolerance of dissent. In response, many clergy condemned the Enlightenment for undermining religion and moral order.
The Second Estate was the titled nobility of French society. In the Middle Ages, noble knights had defended the land. In the 1600s, Richelieu and Louis XIV had crushed the nobles’ military power but had given them other rights—under strict royal control. Those rights included top jobs in government, the army, the courts, and the Church.
At Versailles, ambitious nobles competed for royal appointments while idle courtiers enjoyed endless entertainments. Many nobles, however, lived far from the center of power. Though they owned land, they received little financial income. As a result, they felt the pinch of trying to maintain their status in a period of rising prices.
Many nobles hated absolutism and resented the royal bureaucracy that employed middle-class men in positions that once had been reserved for them. They feared losing their traditional privileges, especially their freedom from paying taxes.
Analyzing Political Cartoons
This cartoon represents the social order in France before the French Revolution. While a member of the Third Estate is beginning to express anger and rise up, a nobleman representing the Second Estate and a priest, representing the First Estate, recoil in surprise and fear.
1. How does the cartoonist portray the Third Estate? Explain why.
2. What were the differences among the social classes in pre-revolutionary France?
The Third Estate was the most diverse social class. At the top sat the bourgeoisie (boor zhwah zee), or middle class. The bourgeoisie included prosperous bankers, merchants, and manufacturers, as well as lawyers, doctors, journalists, and professors. The bulk of the Third Estate, however, consisted of rural peasants. Some were prosperous landowners who hired laborers to work for them. Others were tenant farmers or day laborers.
The poorest members of the Third Estate were urban workers. They included apprentices, journeymen, and others who worked in industries such as printing or cloth making. Many women and men earned a meager living as servants, stable hands, construction workers, or street sellers of everything from food to pots and pans. A large number of the urban poor were unemployed. To survive, some turned to begging or crime.
Vocabulary Builder
urban—(ur bun) adj. of, relating to, or characteristic of a city
From rich to poor, members of the Third Estate resented the privileges enjoyed by their social “betters.” Wealthy bourgeois families in the Third Estate could buy political office and even titles, but the best jobs were still reserved for nobles. Urban workers earned miserable wages. Even the smallest rise in the price of bread, their main food, brought the threat of greater hunger or even starvation.
Because of traditional privileges, the First and Second Estates paid almost no taxes. Peasants were burdened by taxes on everything from land to soap to salt. Though they were technically free, many owed fees and services that dated back to medieval times, such as the corvée (kawr vay), which was unpaid labor to repair roads and bridges. Peasants were also incensed when nobles, hurt by rising prices, tried to reimpose old manor dues.
Infographic
What Is the Third Estate?
In towns and cities, Enlightenment ideas led people to question the inequalities of the old regime. Why, people demanded, should the first two estates have such great privileges at the expense of the majority? Throughout France, the Third Estate called for the privileged classes to pay their share.
Financial Crisis
Economic woes in France added to the social unrest and heightened tensions. One of the causes of the economic troubles was a mushrooming financial crisis that was due in part to years of deficit spending. This occurs when a government spends more money than it takes in.
Louis XIV had left France deeply in debt. The Seven Years’ War and the American Revolution strained the treasury even further. Costs generally had risen in the 1700s, and the lavish court soaked up millions. To bridge the gap between income and expenses, the government borrowed more and more money. By 1789, half of the government’s income from taxes went to paying the interest on this enormous debt. Also, in the late 1780s, bad harvests sent food prices soaring and brought hunger to poorer peasants and city dwellers.
To solve the financial crisis, the government would have to increase taxes, reduce expenses, or both. However, the nobles and clergy fiercely resisted any attempt to end their exemption from taxes.
The heirs of Louis XIV were not the right men to solve the economic crisis that afflicted France. Louis XV, who ruled from 1715 to 1774, pursued pleasure before serious business and ran up more debts. Louis XVI was well-meaning but weak and indecisive. He did, however, wisely choose Jacques Necker, a financial expert, as an advisor. Necker urged the king to reduce extravagant court spending, reform government, and abolish burdensome tariffs on internal trade. When Necker proposed taxing the First and Second Estates, however, the nobles and high clergy forced the king to dismiss him.
As the crisis deepened, the pressure for reform mounted. The wealthy and powerful classes demanded, however, that the king summon the Estates-General, the legislative body consisting of representatives of the three estates, before making any changes. A French king had not called the Estates-General for 175 years, fearing that nobles would use it to recover the feudal powers they had lost under absolute rule. To reform-minded nobles, the Estates-General seemed to offer a chance of carrying out changes like those that had come with the Glorious Revolution in England. They hoped that they could bring the absolute monarch under the control of the nobles and guarantee their own privileges.
Reading Check
Poorer peasants and city dwellers in France were faced with great hunger as bad harvests sent food prices soaring. People began to riot to demand bread. In the countryside, peasants began to attack the manor houses of the nobles. Arthur Young, an English visitor to France, witnessed these riots and disturbances. Why did the poor attack the nobles’ homes?
Primary Source
“Everything conspires to render the present period in France critical: the [lack] of bread is terrible: accounts arrive every moment from the provinces of riots and disturbances, and calling in the military, to preserve the peace of the markets.”
—Arthur Young, Travels in France During the Years 1787, 1788, 1789
Identifying
What groups were part of the Third Estate?
From Estates-General to National Assembly
As 1788 came to a close, France tottered on the verge of bankruptcy. Bread riots were spreading, and nobles, fearful of taxes, were denouncing royal tyranny. A baffled Louis XVI finally summoned the Estates-General to meet at Versailles the following year.
In preparation, Louis had all three estates prepare cahiers (kah yayz), or notebooks, listing their grievances. Many cahiers called for reforms such as fairer taxes, freedom of the press, or regular meetings of the Estates-General. In one town, shoemakers denounced regulations that made leather so expensive they could not afford to make shoes. Servant girls in the city of Toulouse demanded the right to leave service when they wanted and that “after a girl has served her master for many years, she receive some reward for her service.”
The cahiers testified to boiling class resentments. One called tax collectors “bloodsuckers of the nation who drink the tears of the unfortunate from goblets of gold.” Another one of the cahiers condemned the courts of nobles as “vampires pumping the last drop of blood” from the people. Another complained that “20 million must live on half the wealth of France while the clergy . . . devour the other half.”
Delegates of the Third Estate declare themselves to be the National Assembly, representing the people of France. They take the Tennis Court Oath, vowing to create a constitution. The National Assembly later issues the assignat as currency to help pay the government’s debts.
Delegates to the Estates-General from the Third Estate were elected, though only propertied men could vote. Thus, the delegates were mostly lawyers, middle-class officials, and writers. They were familiar with the writings of Voltaire, Rousseau, and other philosophes. They went to Versailles not only to solve the financial crisis but also to insist on reform.
The Estates-General convened in May 1789. From the start, the delegates were deadlocked over the issue of voting. Traditionally, each estate had met and voted separately. Each group had one vote. Under this system, the First and Second Estates always outvoted the Third Estate two to one. This time, the Third Estate wanted all three estates to meet in a single body, with votes counted “by head.”
After weeks of stalemate, delegates of the Third Estate took a daring step. in June 1789, claiming to represent the people of France, they declared themselves to be the National Assembly. A few days later, the National Assembly found its meeting hall locked and guarded. Fearing that the king planned to dismiss them, the delegates moved to a nearby indoor tennis court. As curious spectators looked on, the delegates took their famous Tennis Court Oath. They swore “never to separate and to meet wherever the circumstances might require until we have established a sound and just constitution.”
When reform-minded clergy and nobles joined the Assembly, Louis XVI grudgingly accepted it. But royal troops gathered around Paris, and rumors spread that the king planned to dissolve the Assembly.
Reading Check
Examining
Why did the Third Estate object to each estate's having one vote in the Estates-General?
The Destruction of the Old Regime
Declaration of the Rights of Man
The King Concedes
Church Reforms
The National Assembly put the French Catholic Church under state control. The Civil Constitution ended papal authority over the French Church and dissolved convents and monasteries.
A New Constitution and New Fears
War with Austria
European rulers opposed the French Revolution because they were afraid that revolutionary ideas would spread to their own countries. European rulers were afraid of having their privileges, their property, their religion, and their lives threatened if the French revolutionary ideas were to spread. Even "enlightened" rulers turned against France.
With the Declaration of Pilnitz European rulers threatened to intervene to protect the French monarchy. The king of Prussia and the emperor of Austria (Marie Antoinette's brother) issued the Declaration of Pilnitz, threatening to intervene to protect the French monarchy.
The French declared war on Austria, Prussia, Britain, and others, which caused those great powers
expected an easy victory since France was divided by revolution, facing crises at home.
Rise of the Paris Commune
Reading Check
Evaluating
What was the significance of the Constitution of 1791?
Preview
Section 2 Radical Revolution and Reaction
HW: email me at gmsmith@shanahan.org.
1. Using print and Internet sources (a reference to La Marseilloise is made above, an English translation is also available), familiarize yourself with the lyrics to The Marseillaise, God Save the Queen (not the pop version),
and The Star Spangled Banner. How do they vary in subject matter, tone, theme, and style, and how are they similar?
Not required, but if helpful, create a chart listing your findings.
Bibliographic resources for the French Revolution
Previous to or the buildup to the Revolution
Cf. The Coming of the French Revolution (Princeton Classic Editions)
by Georges Lefebvre.
The Fall of the French Monarchy 1787-1792 (The French Revolution)
by Michel Vovelle.
Great Fear of 1789
by Georges Lefebvre.
General works on the Revolution
The Crowd in the French Revolution (Galaxy Books)
by George Rude.
A Short History of the French Revolution, 1789-1799
by Albert Soboul.
The Abolition Of Feudalism: Peasants, Lords, And Legislators In The French Revolution, by John Markoff.
Interpreting the French Revolution
by Francois Furet.
Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution
by Simon Schama.
The Radical Revolution
The Sans-Culottes
by Albert Soboul.
The Vendee: A Sociological Analysis of the Counter-Revolution of 1793
by Charles Tilly.
Revolutionary Themes After the Revolution
Reflections on the Revolution in France (Oxford World's Classics)
by Edmund Burke.
The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848
by Eric Hobsbawm.
Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime…
by William H. Sewell Jr.
The Course in German History by A.J.P. Taylor.
References:
Chapter 10 Test Prep page
Cf. http://shanawiki.wikispaces.com/Honors+World+History+II+Fall+2010+Chapter+10+Test+Prep+Page
These questions may be--but there is no guarantee--on the Test. They are here as possible questions on the Test for study purposes.
The Enlightenment and the American Revolution (1700–1800)
Philosophy in the Age of Reason
Cf. http://www.phschool.com/webcodes10/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.gotoWebCode&wcprefix=naa&wcsuffix=1719
Enlightenment Ideas Spread Self-Test
Cf. http://www.phschool.com/webcodes10/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.gotoWebCode&wcprefix=naa&wcsuffix=1729
Birth of the American Republic Self-Test
Cf. http://www.phschool.com/webcodes10/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.gotoWebCode&wcprefix=naa&wcsuffix=1739
Chapter Self-Test
Cf. http://www.phschool.com/webcodes10/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.gotoWebCode&wcprefix=naa&wcsuffix=1749
Sec. 1 The French Revolution Begins
Cf. http://www.phschool.com/webcodes10/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.gotoWebCode&wcprefix=nba&wcsuffix=1811
HW: email (or hard copy) me at gmsmith@shanahan.org.
1. Monday HW
p. 334, Picturing History, What happened to the royal family after their capture?
Email only if you answer (i.e., you voluntarily choose to participate):
Last week what I liked least about the class was . . .
Last week what I enjoyed most about the class was . . .
Study for the Test on Ch. 10, Wednesday
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1. Tuesday HW
What was the significance of the Constitution of 1791?
2. Study for the Test on Ch. 10, Wednesday
Chapter 10 Test Prep page
Honors World History II Chapter 10 Test Prep Page
Cf. http://shanawiki.wikispaces.com/Honors+World+History+II+Fall+2010+Chapter+10+Test+Prep+Page
Get a Voki now!
1. Wednesday HW
p. 335, #4
Get a Voki now!
