The French RevolutionThe French Revolution: An Analysis of its Causes, Phases, and Contested Legacy

REVOLUTIONS IN EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICA HIST 1301 | History The French Revolution Proponents of reform against absolute monarchical power and ingrained aristocratic privilege in France started to push for change after seeing the success of their counterparts in North America. Due to the king's lavish spending and, paradoxically, France's backing of the American Revolutionary War, they found themselves in the midst of a major economic crisis. Similar to the struggle for independence in the colonies of North America, the French Revolution was a result of a complicated chain of events. Many peasants and urban poor were on the verge of hunger in the 1770s due to a string of bad harvests and the French Crown's near-bankruptcy; frustration of the regime's failure to offer aid resulted in widespread unrest and riots. The aristocracy, who had hitherto been immune from such assessments, fiercely opposed the Crown's later effort to impose a land tax because they were unwilling to give up their long-standing privileges. Under the Enlightenment language of rights and freedoms, the burgeoning middle class, angry of its absence from political power, campaigned for reform. In the middle of the 1780s, calls for the reform of an outmoded political and social structure reached a breaking point. The French Revolution drastically altered long-standing political structures and the balance of power in Europe, while the American Revolutionary War produced an independent new nation. The revolt's fundamental rejection of authoritarian rule—which limited individual freedom and demanded obedience to government authority—failed in the end, but the social and political reforms it sparked had a significant impact on the development of contemporary nations. The traditional separation of French society between the clergy, aristocracy, and commoners—which upheld the riches and political power of the aristocracy and the church—was at the heart of revolutionary fervour in France. The Catholic clergy, who made up less than 1% of the population but controlled around 10% of French territory, formed up the First Estate under this arrangement, which dates back to the Middle Ages. The church was almost completely free from paying taxes; instead, it made significant profits from fees levied on the general public and tithes, which are levies equal to one-tenth of annual revenue. Though they made up just 3–4% of the population, the nobility, or Second Estate, controlled more than 30% of the nation's territory. Because of their aristocratic standing, they also held the majority of the most important judicial, military, and administrative posts in the royal bureaucracy and were free from paying taxes. The Third Estate, which made up the remaining 95% of the French population and included peasants, the urban poor, the wealthy bourgeoisie or urban middle class who mostly made their living from trade and the professions, and everyone else not included in the other two estates, was primarily responsible for paying taxes. While the French masses found ongoing income disparity to be a major source of grievance, especially at a period of economic hardship, being shut out of political authority was another problem that precipitated the revolution. Many well-educated commoners and aristocrats shared the Enlightenment's emphasis on public opinion, natural rights, and freedom from tyranny. They felt that political and economic reforms were urgently required in France. The Estates General, France's closest approximation to a constitutional body, was a general assembly composed of representatives of the nobility, clergy, and commoners. However, no French king had called the assembly together since 1614. The voting system of this body, which allowed one vote to each estate, was equally problematic. Generally speaking, the nobility and clergy supported similar causes, therefore their votes always blocked whatever proposals the Third Estate would make. King Louis XVI called a meeting of the Estates General in 1789 out of desperation to suggest drastic economic change and the imposition of additional levies. However, the Third Estate declined to take part unless the king changed the election procedure. Following a period of impasse, the Third Estate assembled as a separate National Assembly with the backing of several church members. In response to this act of political revolt, which strengthened the people's sovereignty, the monarch gathered military troops with the intention of using force to subdue the populace. However, his strategy backfired when a series of popular uprisings in Paris and around the nation led to the common people seizing locations associated with royal power, including the Parisian stronghold known as the Bastille, redistributing land, and refusing to pay taxes. The National Assembly, then in a strong position, issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which, like the U.S. Declaration of Independence, upheld natural rights like liberty and property and required the establishment of representative government, equality before the law, and freedom of speech. The National Assembly drafted a new constitution in 1791 with the intention of limiting monarchical authority and upholding the Declaration's principles. The newly established Legislative Assembly was tasked with creating legislative reform and managing France as a constitutional monarchy. The French dramatist Olympe de Gouges was among the detractors of the Declaration who opposed it despite its progressive measures because it did not address women's rights. Gouges released her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen in 1791. It affirmed that women should have the same civic rights as men and placed a strong emphasis on women's equality with men. As the economic conditions in France deteriorated, a group of ladies who were having difficulty providing for their families rallied thousands of people to address the monarch and demand change. The sansculottes, radicals from the lower and working classes who could not afford the culottes, or stylish short trousers, worn by the aristocracy and signifying one did not have to perform manual labour for a living (sans is French for 'without'), were also crucial in generating revolutionary momentum against the king and the country's extreme wealth inequality. The monarch lost all remaining public support when he and his wife, Queen Marie-Antoinette, tried to flee after the enraged crowd had taken the royal family hostage. Louis was found guilty of treason by the National Convention, a representative body that was established by the newly established Legislative Assembly, which also suspended the monarch. The many revolutionary factions that made up the National Convention had divergent ideas about the nature of French society and the government that should exist there. Diverse political clubs and associations presented differing opinions on the objectives of the revolution and the most effective way to accomplish them. The most powerful of these clubs, the Jacobins, were established in 1789 and rose to prominence fast. The goal of the Jacobin movement was to overthrow King Louis XVI and replace the French monarchy with a republic. However, reaching a compromise was challenging due to differences between their extremist and moderate sections. The radical Jacobin faction known as the Mountain, so named because its members sat on the highest benches of the National Convention, supported the king's execution, while the moderate Girondins, some of whom were from the Gironde region of southwest France, opposed it. Following the monarch's trial before the Convention, the Mountain finally won, and the king was put to death in January 1793. The Reign of Terror was a period of brutal persecution that began in 1793 under the leadership of the Mountain and their followers, who labelled anybody who opposed the king's death as enemies of the revolution. From 1793 to 1794, the Committee of Public Safety, the French provisional government, was led by the lawyer Maximilien de Robespierre, a proponent of equality. Liberté, égalité, fraternité (liberty, equality, brotherhood) served as the war cry throughout this extreme phase of the revolution, which also saw the abolition of slavery and the regulation of grain prices. Even with these successes, though, it was fundamentally contradictory since tens of thousands of people were unjustly detained or put to death in order to put an end to protest. As support for Robespierre's oppressive measures declined, disagreements over economic and religious policies between the Committee of Public Safety and the Convention accelerated the end of the Reign of Terror. Robespierre was forced from office by opposing forces by 1794, and the Terror came to an end in July 1794 with the guillotine execution of its leaders, including Robespierre. After that, the Convention abolished the Committee of Public Safety's administrative authority and worked to bring political stability back by drafting a new constitution in 1795 that created the Directory, a new executive body made up of five men. The extreme Jacobins who want to revive the revolutionary fervour of the Terror and the conservative forces who wanted to reinstate the monarchy presented the new administration with several obstacles despite its efforts to quell uprisings and opposition. A period of famine and economic hardship compounded the growing conflict between moderates and radicals, which finally prompted the Directory to invite Napoleon Bonaparte, a ruthless and charismatic general in the French army, to assist them in 1799 in forging a more authoritative government and silencing the critics. The French movement's idealism ended when the Terror failed, and the movement adopted a more conservative tack. Napoleon's takeover of power turned the modern democratic tradition that was blossoming in France into popular tyranny. Napoleon proclaimed himself emperor in 1804, but he also restored slavery in France's colonies, despite having preserved certain revolutionary victories. He commanded a vast empire when he was most powerful. Napoleon, however, abdicated his crown in 1814 after a string of abortive military expeditions motivated by his ambition to rule Europe, including a fatal effort to invade Russia. After that, he went back and led France once more until the British and Prussians defeated him at Waterloo, Belgium, in 1815. Napoleon was finally expelled from France and had to live out the remainder of his days in exile as a result of this defeat. With the restoration of the French monarchy in 1814–1815, the French Revolution now seemed to have gone full circle. The restored French king, Louis XVIII, was forced to acknowledge the new constitutional rights of his citizens to engage in politics and to limit the king's authority since he was unable to reign as an absolute ruler. Despite Napoleon's brief autocratic rule, the French Revolution was successful in overthrowing the most absolute monarchy in European history and reducing the excessive authority held by the church and nobles. The movement was long motivated by the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity, which the French revolutionaries were unable to completely realise. They aimed to replace aristocratic and royal privilege with broad reforms based on the principles of natural rights and defence against despotic rule. Nevertheless, in reality, despite their crucial contributions to the revolution, French women were denied many of the liberties enjoyed by their male counterparts. In actuality, women were granted the right to vote in 1944 by France, the last of the main Western powers. The conflict between the Enlightenment ideas of liberty, which drove the revolution, and France's continued colonialism, use of slave labour, and prejudice towards free people of colour was perhaps even more perplexing. Aside from a brief interval throughout the Reign of Terror, France persisted in maintaining the system of slavery in its colonies. In instance, during the French Revolution, enslaved or free persons of colour received limited, if any, rights in the colony of Saint-Domingue, now known as Haiti. In the end, France's legacy from the revolution was not entirely positive.