A Quick Rundown of The French Revolution

• Started in 1789 (Bastille Day) and lasted into 1795 when Napoleon took over

• French citizens started it because of their discontent of the way they were being governed and because they didn’t like the structures that were in place like the monarchy and the feudal system and King Louis XVI’s economic policies at the time.

• The revolution was incredibly violent and chaotic but overall it showed the incredible will of the people. 

Lead Up Events

• France’s involvement in the American Revolution plus Louis XVI’s crazy amounts of spending= brink of bankruptcy

• High taxation with little relief being offered to citizens- poor harvests and drought also skyrocketed the amount of people living in poverty and difficult living situations. This caused looting and rioting as a show of being displeased with the lack of support from the people in power.

• Louis’s controller general proposed a financial reform package that would no longer omit the privileged and higher classes—Louis called together the Estates-General for the first time since 1614 to garner support for the new reform package. He also hoped to stall any revolts by showing that he was taking some action. The meeting was scheduled for May 1789.

• However, the population had greatly changed since the last time they were called upon and now the third estate held 98 percent of the people but wasn’t protected from being outvoted by the other two estates. Leading up to the meeting, the third estate started to call for voting by heads and not by status. 

• Now this issue overshadowed the original point of the meeting in May and the third estate adopted the title of National Assembly and vowed to stay together until their needs were met. Most of the other members from the other two estates joined them, forcing Louis’s hand to absorb all three estates into the National Assembly. 

Bastille Day and the Official Start of the Revolution

• Widespread hysteria about a rumored military coup started spreading and resulted in citizens storming the Bastille to take gunpowder and weapons on July 14th, 1789, which is now considered the official start of the French Revolution.

• Peasants rebelled against years of treatment by burning down homes of landlords and tax collectors- The Great Fear.

• This resulted in the abolition of feudalism in August of 1789.

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• Late August 1789 brought the Declaration of the Rights of Men and of the Citizen which was a statement of principles that was highly influenced by the thoughts of the Enlightenment thinkers. 

• Then came the task to draft a formal constitution which left the Assembly wrestling about important questions for months. 

• Finally, on September 3rd, 1791, a written constitution was adopted which continued to give royal veto power to the King under a constitutional monarchy. This was not well received by radicals that were pushing for a republican form of government and a trial for Louis. 

The Violence Grows

• On August 10th, 1792 a group of radicals led by the extremists Jacobins stormed the royal residence and arrested the King.

• A month later the Assembly was overthrown in favor of the National Convention that declared the end of the monarchy and established the French Republic. Louis was then sent to the guillotine on January 21st, 1793 followed by his wife, Marie Antoinette, 9 months later. 

• The National Convention was divided into the Girondins and the Jacobins

• The Girondins wanted a bourgeois republic in France and wanted the revolution to spread all over Europe.

• The Jacobins wanted the lower classes to have a greater share of the political and economic power and were the more radical of the two.

The Reign of Terror

• September 1793-July 1794

• A period of time during the revolution where over 300,000 citizens were arrested and over 17,000 were publicly executed for having been thought to be against the revolution.

• Led by the Jacobins and mainly Robespierre (head of the committee for public safety) who called for most of the public executions until his own execution in July 1794, marking the end of The Reign of Terror or The Great Terror.