French Revolution

The French Revolution is one of the most famous revolutions in all of history. It started out with hope and promise, but then there was a "Reign of Terror", a chaos wherein anyone could be killed at any time. At least 18,000 people were executed on the Guillotine.

Before the Revolution, France had three levels in its social system: The First, Second, and Third Estates. The First Estate was about 1% of the population, but it controlled 10% of the land. The First Estate consisted of the clergy, and they did not pay any taxes. The Second Estate was about 2% of the population and they controlled 20% of the land. These were the nobility, and they too payed very little taxes. The Third Estate was everyone else, and they were badly overtaxed by the monarch. This overtaxing was a major cause of the French Revolution. Interestingly, taxes also helped to spark the American Revolution.

The leaders of the Third Estate were the middle class, called the bourgeoisie. They were educated in the ideas of the Enlightenment, most importantly Jean Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau's book, "The Social Contract" supported a direct democracy, rather that the republican government that had been adopted in America. The social contract spoke against titles for nobility and demanded complete equality for all people. These ideas later inspired communist writers like Karl Marx.

Chronology of the French Revolution

In 1785 a drought led to the poorest harvest in France for many years. Realizing the need to increase taxes, the King imposed measures such as building a wall around Paris to act as a customs post. In 1787 he called a meeting of 144 leading nobles to attempt to persuade them to pay tax in return for increased powers. The nobles refused his requests and were supported by the local authority in Paris (the parlment).

The King withdrew his demands at this challenge to his authority, which was greeted by thousands taking to the street to celebrate. When troops were ordered to "Get some lead into the bastards' backsides", they fired into the air instead. In hindsight this can be seen as the start of dissent. It is notable that the initiators of this unrest were the upper classes, who had little reason to think there was any thirst for revolution. In April 1787, Calonne resigned in disgrace and the middle classes, strengthened by the protests, began to demand an Estates-Generale, a Parliament in which they would be represented.

1789 - Year of Revolution

With growing unrest and France was near bankruptcy, the King agreed to call the Estates-Generale in May 1789. The Estate-Generale was divided into the three estates, with the first two estates (nobility and clergy) electing their representatives. The third estate representation required a series of elections in which all property owners over the age of twenty-five were eligible to take part. The elected a group of electors, who in turn chose delegates (which was to include the young lawyer Maximilien Robespierre. Furthermore, the Third Estate was required to produce a list of grievences.

Between 25,000 and 60,000 documents were filed with grievences. Thousands demanded a constitution, reorganization of the clergy, lessening of the tax burden and an end to Royal waste. Few of these demands could be resolved without challenging the basis of Absolute Monarchy. However, not one of these document has been found to advocate abolition of the monarchy, with the large majority requesting moderate reform and many including expression of adoration towards the King.

The Second Estate then made a big mistake in demanding a meeting of the Estates-General, which was a French Assembly that had not met in 175 years. The defect in this strategy was that each Estate had one vote in the Assembly, such that the First and Second Estates could always outvote the Third Estate. That was acceptable in the early 1600s, but the Third Estate would not allow this in 1789 after learning the Enlightenment ideas. They wanted a system of one vote per delegate, which would have given the Third Estate the same number of votes as the First and Second Estate combined.

When the First and Second Estates refused this request by the Third Estate, it left and formed a new National Assembly. When the Third Estate was locked out of its meeting place, it met on tennis court and took the “Tennis Court Oath” to draft a new French constitution.

Violence soon hit the streets. On July 14, 1789 (“Bastille Day”), French peasants stormed the large Paris prison known as Bastille, freeing the inmates. The Great Fear or panic resulted, as riots occurred and peasants proceeded to burn wealthy homes. Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, were forced from their home in Versailles by a riot of women over the high price of bread. Supposedly the snobby Antoinette responded unsympathetically to the lack of bread for the peasants by declaring, “Let them eat cake!” Historians doubt she ever actually said that.

By then the French Revolution was in full swing. The National Assembly approved the “Declaration of the Rights of Man,” which combined ideas of the American Declaration of Independence with some Enlightenment concepts. The result of this combination had many debatable claims. The entire document is short and worth reading in full: http://www.hrcr.org/docs/frenchdec.html

Unlike the American declaration that “all men are created equal,” the French version declared that “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.” Unlike the American declaration that all men have inalienable rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” the French version declared that all men have natural rights of “liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression.” Some of the French declarations seem silly, like this one: “Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.” What is the meaning of a freedom if it is arbitrarily limited by undefined “abuses of this freedom”? The declaration should have enumerated every single possible abuse, such as slander, incitement to hatred, incitement to violence, incitement to racism, seditious talk, violation of professional secret, divulgation of state secrets, etc. It should also have defined each of them and the applicable penalties in a highly defined way. It's not as if laws could have been written later to define these abuses.

In 1791, a French journalist named Olympe de Gouges proposed a “Declaration of the Rights of Woman,” but the National Assembly rejected her proposal. She, like many other leaders of that time, was eventually executed by guillotine.

The French National Assembly established a constitutional monarchy and, in 1791, adopted a new constitution that created a Legislative Assembly. Three factions quickly formed in the new Legislative Assembly, known as the radicals (liberals), moderates (centrists) and conservatives, similar to those political movements today in the United States. The three factions sat in different sections of the large assembly hall, with the radicals (liberals) sitting on the left, the moderates sitting in the center, and the conservatives sitting on the right. That gave rise to the left-center-right terminology that we still use today in the United States to describe these three political groups.

Meanwhile, Prussia and Austria were at war with one another, and Prussia offered to help the French King Louis XVI and his royal family. In response, in August 1792, the French revolutionaries imprisoned the king and his family.

A new National Convention replaced the Legislative Assembly and abolished the monarchy in order to establish a republic in 1792, which gave all adult males the right to vote. A radical political group called the Jacobins gained power, led by Georges Danton and Jean Paul Marat. Under the influence of the Jacobins, the National Convention used the guillotine to execute Louis XVI in January 1793. By this time many countries, including Great Britain, Spain, the Netherlands, Prussia and Austria, had formed a First Coalition to invade France and restore monarchy. The National Convention responded by drafting people into an army. Historians claim women were drafted, but such a politically inspired claim is worth investigating before accepting it. The war lasted for several years, on several fronts, but the First Coalition was eventually defeated.

The execution of Louis XVI led almost immediately to the Reign of Terror. Maximilian Robespierre, head of the Committee of Public Safety, proceeded to guillotine numerous alleged enemies, including Marie Antoinette. In a classic illustration of Jesus’s teaching that “he who lives by the sword dies by the sword,” Jacobin leaders Georges Danton (a fiery orator) was guillotined, and Jean-Paul Marat (a scientist) was stabbed to death in his bathtub. Eventually Robespierre himself was guillotined in 1794, and the Reign of Terror ended with his death.

At last the government of France was in the hands of a legislature, and an executive branch of five men called the Directory. The Directory picked a young, highly successful military genius named Napoleon to lead the French army. The very next day Napoleon seized all power in France as its dictator, in November 1799.

The influence of the French Revolution was immense throughout the western hemisphere, as other peoples felt that they, too, could rise up against their rulers and defeat them. Historians credit the French Revolution with spreading the ideas of the Enlightenment, limiting the power of nobility and clergy, and ending an absolute monarchy. But many who supported the French Revolution in its beginning were horrified by where it led, including numerous executions and terror. Some would say that France never fully recovered, as the French Revolution unleashed an hostility towards Christianity that continues to this day in France.

See also

• Alexis de Tocqueville