Chapter 20
The Old Regime
•
The Clergy –
the First Estate.
100 ,000 members.
Enormous wealth and privilege. The Church owned
about 10% of the land and paid no taxes.
•
The Nobles-
The Second Estate
. 400,000 members.
Titled nobility. They made up 1.5% of the population.
They resented the middle class. Own 25% of the land
Paid no taxes
•
Everyone else –
The Third Estate
. Made up 98% of
the population. At the top sat the Bourgeoisie – or
middle class (bankers, merchants etc) 9 out of 10 people
in France were rural peasants. The poorest members
•
Discontent – members of the third Estate resented the
privileges enjoyed by their social betters. Wealthy
families, referred to as the Bourgeoisie, could buy
political offices and even titles, best jobs were
Economic Troubles
Burden of Debt under Louis XV
◦
Louis XIV had left France deeply in debt
◦
Between income and expenses the government
borrowed more money.
◦
The government wanted to raise taxes but the first
and second estates continued to block the tax.
Louis XV problems
•
Louis XV appoints Rene de Maupeou to collect taxes.
•
Louis’ mistress Madame de Pompadour had
tremendous influence over his reign.
•
After his affairs he drifted into more immorality –
Eventually he was stripped of the sacred aura of
God’s anointed on earth = Desacralization.
•
Louis XV died in 1774 and the crown went to Louis
Financial Crisis
•
By 1780 fully 50% of France’s annual budget went
for interest payments on the debt, 25% went to the
military. Less than 20% went to functions of the
state.
•
France had no central bank, no paper currency.
•
Louis XVI’s finance minister called the Assembly of
Notables to help issue new taxes.
•
When they would not do it Louis XVI dismissed
The Estates General
(French version of the Parliament)
•
Louis XVI gives into public pressure and calls a meeting
of the Estates General
•
The Cahiers – notebooks of grievances
– Louis XVI asked all three estates to write up their
grievances for reform.
– The Cahiers called for fairer taxes, freedom of the press
and regular meetings of the Estates General.
– Move from Absolute rule to Constitutional Monarchy
The Tennis Court Oath
Members of the Third Estate were elected propertied men.
When the Estates General met they had problems regarding
voting issues. Each group had ONE vote.
The Third Estate wanted all three estates to meet in a single
body with votes counted “by head”.
The Third Estate broke away from the Estates General and
created the National Assembly.
Locked out of the Estates General, they met on the Tennis Court
and vowed to never separate and to meet wherever the
•
At first the king’s response was positive.
•
He called all three estates together.
•
His family and friends were urging him to dissolve
the National Assembly.
•
Asserting his divine right to rule the king called an
army of 18,000 to march toward the capital.
•
July 11, King dismissed his finance minister.
Storming of the Bastille
•
July 14, 1789
–
Bread riots led to riots about the King bringing troops
into the towns.
–
800 people marched to Bastille (prison)
–
The crowd demanded weapons and gunpowder
–
The storming of the Bastille became a symbol of the
Revolts in the Provinces
•
The Great fear: Tales of attacks by the common
people and peasants on villages and towns spread
panic.
•
Fear and famine, the peasants attacked the homes of
nobles and stole grains.
•
The Duke of Aiguillon called for equality in taxation
Paris Revolts
•
The Capital was the revolutionary center.
•
Lafayette headed the National Guard.
•
The Guard was the first group to wear the red, white and
blue badges which became the national flag of France.
•
Moderate Reforms: National Assembly – all nobles
renounced their “privileges” and ended Feudalism. The
Declaration of the Rights of Man
• 1
Modeled after the American Declaration of Independence.
• 2. All men, were born and remain free and equal in rights.
• 3. Natural rights of liberty, property and security.
• 4. Government exists to protect the natural rights.
• 5. All Frenchmen had equal rights to hold public offices
• 6. Freedom of religion
• 7. Taxes based on ability to pay.
Women’s March on Versailles
•
Anger was directed at the queen
•
Famous for saying “Let them eat cake” (not really)
•
Women would not leave until the king agreed to
return to Paris
Constitution of 1791
•
Set up a limited monarchy
•
Unicameral legislative assembly had the power to make
laws, collect taxes and decide issues of war and peace.
•
Active and Passive Citizens
– Active citizens: men paying annual taxes equal to three days of local labor wages could vote (electors)
The Reconstruction of France
• Olympe de Gourges Declaration of the Rights of Women
Divorce was easier, and women could inherit property, and men should be required to recognize their paternity.
• National convention declared that women lacked “the moral and
physical strength necessary to practice political rights.
• Changes in daily life – wearing of Liberty Caps, They called each
other “citizen”
• Rise in nationalism – strong pride in and devotion to one’s
Civil Constitution of the Clergy
• Reorganizing the Church
– National Assembly took over the Catholic Church.
– Civil Constitution of the Clergy – they established a national
church - Bishops and Priests became elected and salaried.
– They were required to take an oath to the new government
– The Bishops refused to accept the civil constitution.
– Clergy who refused were punished.
Economic Changes
•
Chapelier laws
–
Workers could not organize in such a way as to
resemble the abolished guilds of the Old regime -Left
the market place uncontrolled.
•
Confiscation of Church land to pay off the royal debt.
Caused further inflation, religious schism and civil war.
Reaction to the Revolution
•
Émigrés – nobles, clergy and others who had fled France
told stories of how they lost their privileges, land, and
religion.
•
Revolution was condemned by Catherine the Great, and
Edmund Burke.
•
Mary Wollstonecraft wrote a response to Burke called “A
Vindication of the Rights of Women””
– Demanded rights of women – Coeducation
•
Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette were
arrested trying to escape the country.
•
He was to be tried as a traitor.
•
Declaration of Pilnitz – King of Prussia and Emperor
of Austria threatened to intervene to protect the
French Monarchy.
•
The Assembly decided to spread the revolution to
other peasants and attacked Prussia first.
•
Prussia then joins Austria against the French (who
Monarchy to Republic
•
Violence:
–
Legislature controlled by the radicals (Jacobins
and Girondists) went to war against Austria,
Prussia and England.
–
August of 1792 the people of Paris attacked the
Tuileries and killed the kings guards.
The French Republic (Second Revolution
)
Elected a new legislative body called the National
Convention. Sept. 21, 1792 they declared France a Republic
(without a monarch)
Led by a group called Sans-culottes.
They wanted relief from food shortages and rising prices through price controls
Right to vote was extended to all males.
Jacobins – pro French Republic and Anti monarchy, they
seized the lands of the nobles.
Death of the King and Queen
•
King Louis XVI was convicted of being a traitor
to France and was beheaded January 1793
•
Queen Antoinette was executed in October
1793
Political and Chaotic Terror
•
Committee of Public Safety – 12 members with
unquestioned power.
•
To earn support of the people they did initiate price
controls especially on bread.
– They could only make “bread of equality” (brown bread)
pastries and white bread were outlawed as luxuries.
•
Levee en Mass – all citizens must contribute to the war
effort.
•
All males were to go into the military
Robespierre
Leader of the Committee of Public Safety.
Promoted religious toleration
•
Believed that France could achieve a “republic of
Virtue” only through terror
Women and changes in daily life
•
Society of Revolutionary Republican Women – to fight
the internal enemies of the revolution. They saw
themselves as militant citizens.
•
They attended the National Convention to listen to
debates and cheer their favorite speakers.
•
They called for stricter controls on the price of
Oct 1793 the Jacobins banned all women’s clubs and
societies. Citing “the separation of sphere’s”
De-Christianization of the Church
• De-Christianization of the France – Nov 1793.
– New calendar dating from the first day of the French Republic. Twelve months with 30 days each
– Names associated with the seasons and climate were changed.
– Every 10th day was a holiday.
– Cathedral of Notre Dame was renamed the “Temple of Reason”.
Revolutionary Tribunals
Summer 1793 The Tribunals were designed to try the enemies of the republic.
◦ Those that would aide other European powers
◦ Those who endangered republican virtue
◦ First victims of the Tribunal and Guillotine were Marie Antoinette and other members of the royal family.
End of the Terror
Revolutionaries turned against themselves. Robespierre started turning against the sans-culottes leaders known as the enrages.
• Reign of Terror
– Law of 22 Prairial: permitted the revolutionary tribunal to convict
suspects without hearing substantial evidence against them
– 40,000 people were killed by using the new method called the guillotine
◦ He then turned against the Republicans – accused them of being insufficiently militant on the war, profiting monetarily from the
Fall of Robespierre
Considered the worship of
Reason
to abstract for most
citizens so he replaced it with the “
Cult of the Supreme
Being
”
Civic religion that would induce morality among citizens
He became paranoid and began charging others with
conspiracies.
Thermidorian Reaction
•
Members of the Convention took control from the
Committee of Public Safety
•
Destruction of the machinery of terror and establishment
of a new constitutional regime.
• General amnesty freed political prisoners. Repeal of the Law of 22 Prairial. Jacobin clubs were closed
• Executions of former terrorists began the “white terror”.
Anyone who had been involved in the Reign of Terror was killed.
Third and final stage of the Second Revolution
•
Constitution of the Year III (1795)
•
Legislature consisted of two houses
–
Council of elders: men over 40 who were either husbands
or widowers.
–
Council of Five Hundred: men at least 30 who could be
either married or single
•
Executive
–
Five person directory whom the Elders would choose
